New Mexico has a complex gaming background. When the IGRA was signed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Native casino craze. Politics assured that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a panel in Nineteen Ninety to create a contract with New Mexico American Indian bands. When the panel came to an accord with 2 big local bands a year later, Governor King declined to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it appeared that Amerindian betting in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the accord with the Indian bands, anti-gambling forces were able to tie the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, thus denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It required the CNA, passed by the New Mexico government, to get the process moving on a full accord between the State of New Mexico and its American Indian tribes. A decade had been lost for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo business has grown since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game owners brought in just $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have increased constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the owners.
Bingo is apparently beloved in New Mexico. All sorts of providers try for a bit of the action. With hope, the politicians are through batting around gambling as a key issue like they did in the 1990’s. That’s probably hopeful thinking.