16
April
Written by Bailee.
Posted in: Casino
[
English ]
New Mexico has a stormy gaming past. When the IGRA 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 guaranteed that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a panel in 1990 to negotiate an accord with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the panel came to an accord with two prominent local tribes a year later, Governor King refused to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Indian gaming in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the contract with the Amerindian tribes, anti-gaming forces were able to hold the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the deal, thus 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 ball rolling on a full accord amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Indian bands. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo business has grown since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico non-profit game providers acquired just $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and passed a million dollars in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since that time. 2005 saw the greatest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is certainly favored in New Mexico. All sorts of operators look for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting over gambling as a key matter like they did in the 1990’s. That’s without doubt wishful thinking.
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