New Mexico has a stormy gaming background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in 1989, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Indian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a working group in Nineteen Ninety to draft a contract with New Mexico Amerindian tribes. When the panel came to an accord with 2 important local bands a year later, Governor King declined to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it appeared that Indian gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the compact with the Indian tribes, anti-gambling forces were able to hold the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the deal, therefore 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, passed by the New Mexico house, to get the ball rolling on a full accord between the Government of New Mexico and its Native bands. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, including Amerindian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has gotten bigger since 1999. That year, New Mexico charity game operators acquired only $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since then. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All types of operators look for a slice of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting around gaming as a key issue like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s without doubt wishful thinking.