New Mexico has a bitter gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by Congress in 1989, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a task force in Nineteen Ninety to create an accord with New Mexico Indian bands. When the working group came to an accord with 2 prominent local bands a year later, the Governor declined to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that Native wagering in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the compact with the Indian tribes, anti-gambling forces were able to tie the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the deal, therefore denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the process moving on a full compact between the Government of New Mexico and its Amerindian tribes. A decade had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, including American Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico non-profit game operators brought in only $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo earnings have increased constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the owners.
Bingo is apparently favored in New Mexico. All kinds of providers try for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting around gambling as an important factor like they did in the 90’s. That is most likely hopeful thinking.
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.
You must be logged in to post a comment.