New Mexico has a rocky gaming past. When the IGRA was signed by Congress in 1989, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino craze. Politics assured that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a panel in Nineteen Ninety to create a contract with New Mexico Native bands. When the task force arrived at an accord with 2 big local bands a year later, Governor King refused to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it appeared that Native gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the contract with the Indian bands, anti-gaming forces were able to tie the accord up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had out stepped his bounds in signing the compact, therefore costing the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It required the CNA, passed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the ball rolling on a full contract between the Government of New Mexico and its Native tribes. A decade had been lost for gaming in New Mexico, including American Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico charity game owners brought in only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and passed one million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo earnings have grown constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is apparently beloved in New Mexico. All sorts of operators look for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting around gambling as an important factor like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
