New Mexico has a bitter gambling past. When the IGRA was signed by the House in 1989, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to cash in on the Amerindian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a panel in 1990 to negotiate a compact with New Mexico Indian bands. When the panel came to an accord with 2 important local bands a year later, the Governor declined to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it seemed that American Indian gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the accord with the Amerindian bands, anti-gaming groups were able to tie the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the deal, therefore costing the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues 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 contract between the State of New Mexico and its American Indian bands. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, including American Indian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo business has gotten bigger since 1999. In that year, New Mexico charity game providers acquired only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and passed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo earnings have grown steadily since then. 2005 witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.
Bingo is certainly favored in New Mexico. All sorts of owners try for a slice of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting around gaming as a hot button factor like they did back in the 90’s. That’s without doubt wishful 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.