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New Mexico has a stormy gambling past. When the IGRA was signed by Congress in 1989, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to cash in on the American Indian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that would not be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a task force in Nineteen Ninety to draft an accord with New Mexico Amerindian bands. When the working group came to an accord with two big local bands a year later, Governor King refused to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Amerindian gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the compact with the Native tribes, anti-wagering groups were able to hold the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing the compact, thereby denying the government of New Mexico 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 compact amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Native tribes. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has grown from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game providers brought in only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have grown steadily since that time. 2005 witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the owners.
Bingo is apparently beloved in New Mexico. All sorts of owners look for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting over gambling as an important matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That is without doubt hopeful thinking.
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