New Mexico Bingo
New Mexico has a complex gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in 1989, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to cash in on the American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a working group in 1990 to draft a compact with New Mexico American Indian bands. When the task force came to an agreement with 2 important local tribes a year later, the Governor declined to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it appeared that Amerindian gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the contract with the Indian tribes, anti-wagering groups were able to tie the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, thereby denying the government of New Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It required the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the process moving on a full accord amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Indian bands. A decade had been lost for gambling in New Mexico, including Amerindian casino Bingo.
The not for profit Bingo industry has grown since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico charity game owners acquired only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and passed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have grown steadily since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is certainly beloved in New Mexico. All sorts of providers try for a slice of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting over gambling as a key matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s without doubt hopeful thinking.
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