New Mexico has a bitter gaming history. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a working group in Nineteen Ninety to negotiate a contract with New Mexico Native tribes. When the working group came to an accord with 2 important local bands a year later, the Governor refused to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it appeared that Indian gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the accord with the Amerindian tribes, anti-gaming groups were able to tie the contract up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, thereby denying the government of New Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It took the CNA, passed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the process moving on a full accord amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Indian tribes. A decade had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger since 1999. In that year, New Mexico charity game owners acquired only $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and passed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since that time. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the providers.
Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All sorts of owners look for a slice of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting over gambling as a key matter like they did in the 1990’s. That is most likely wishful thinking.