New Mexico has a bitter gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in 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 create a compact with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the task force arrived at an agreement with two important local tribes a year later, Governor King declined to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that American Indian gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the contract with the Native tribes, anti-gambling forces were able to tie the accord up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing a deal, therefore denying the state 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 government, to get the process moving on a full contract between the State of New Mexico and its Amerindian bands. A decade had been lost for gaming in New Mexico, which includes Amerindian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has increased from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game operators brought in only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and passed one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is apparently beloved in New Mexico. All sorts of owners try for a piece of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting around gambling as a hot button issue like they did in the 1990’s. That is without doubt hopeful thinking.