New Mexico has a bitter gambling background. When the IGRA was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a panel in 1990 to negotiate a compact with New Mexico Native bands. When the working group came to an accord with 2 important local tribes a year later, the Governor refused to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it appeared that American Indian wagering in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the compact with the Amerindian tribes, anti-gambling groups were able to tie the accord up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had out stepped his bounds in signing the accord, thus denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico government, to get the process moving on a full compact amongst the State of New Mexico and its Amerindian bands. A decade had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, including Native casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has gotten bigger from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico charity game operators acquired only $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have grown steadily since then. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the owners.
Bingo is clearly beloved in New Mexico. All types of owners try for a piece of the action. With hope, the politicians are done batting over gambling as an important matter like they did in the 90’s. That is without doubt wishful thinking.
This entry was posted on December 18, 2021, 8:25 pm and is filed under Casino. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.