New Mexico has a complex gaming background. When the IGRA was signed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the American Indian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that would not be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a panel in Nineteen Ninety to create a compact with New Mexico Amerindian bands. When the task force arrived at an agreement with two big local tribes a year later, Governor King refused to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Native wagering in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the accord with the Amerindian bands, anti-wagering forces were able to tie the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing the compact, thereby denying the government 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 amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Native bands. A decade had been squandered for gaming in New Mexico, including Native casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo business has gotten bigger from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico non-profit game owners acquired only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All kinds of owners try for a slice of the pie. With hope, the politicians are through batting around gaming as a hot button issue like they did back in the 90’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.