New Mexico has a rocky gambling past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to cash in on the American Indian casino craze. Politics assured that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a panel in Nineteen Ninety to create a compact with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the working group arrived at an accord with two important local tribes a year later, the Governor refused to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it appeared that Amerindian gaming in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the compact with the Native bands, anti-gaming forces were able to tie the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, thus denying the government of New Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It required the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico government, to get the process moving on a full accord amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Amerindian bands. A decade had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Amerindian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has grown from 1999. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game operators acquired only $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo earnings have increased constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five saw the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.
Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All sorts of owners look for a piece of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting around gambling as an important issue like they did back in the 90’s. That is probably hopeful thinking.