New Mexico has a rocky gaming background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a working group in 1990 to create an accord with New Mexico American Indian bands. When the working group came to an accord with two big local bands a year later, the Governor declined to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it seemed that Native gaming in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the accord with the Amerindian bands, anti-gambling forces were able to tie the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing the accord, therefore costing the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It required the CNA, signed by the New Mexico house, to get the ball rolling on a full accord between the Government of New Mexico and its American Indian tribes. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico charity game operators acquired only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have grown steadily since that time. 2005 witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is categorically popular in New Mexico. All types of providers try for a slice of the action. With hope, the politicians are done batting around gambling as an important issue like they did in the 1990’s. That’s most likely hopeful thinking.