New Mexico has a stormy gambling history. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that would not be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a task force in 1990 to negotiate an accord with New Mexico Amerindian bands. When the working group arrived at an agreement with two big local bands 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 seemed that Amerindian gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the accord with the Amerindian bands, anti-gambling groups were able to hold the accord up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the compact, therefore costing the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the process moving on a full contract amongst the State of New Mexico and its Amerindian tribes. A decade had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico not for profit game providers brought in only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo earnings have increased constantly since then. 2005 witnessed the largest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the owners.
Bingo is categorically popular in New Mexico. All sorts of providers try for a piece of the pie. With hope, the politicos are through batting over gambling as a hot button matter like they did in the 1990’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.