New Mexico has a stormy gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a working group in Nineteen Ninety to negotiate an accord with New Mexico Native bands. When the panel arrived at an agreement with 2 important local tribes a year later, the Governor refused to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that American Indian gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the accord with the Amerindian bands, anti-gaming groups were able to hold the contract up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, therefore denying the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It required the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the process moving on a full compact between the Government of New Mexico and its Indian tribes. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, including Amerindian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has gotten bigger from 1999. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game owners brought in only $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded one million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have increased constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the owners.
Bingo is clearly favored in New Mexico. All types of owners try for a slice of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting around gambling as a key issue like they did in the 90’s. That is without doubt wishful thinking.