New Mexico Bingo
New Mexico has a stormy gaming background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by the House in 1989, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Indian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a working group in 1990 to discuss a compact with New Mexico American Indian tribes. When the panel came to an agreement with 2 prominent local tribes a year later, Governor King declined to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it appeared that Native gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the accord with the Amerindian tribes, anti-gaming groups were able to hold the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the compact, thereby denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It required the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico house, to get the ball rolling on a full compact between the Government of New Mexico and its Indian tribes. 10 years had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, including Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has gotten bigger since 1999. That year, New Mexico non-profit game operators brought in only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have grown steadily since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.
Bingo is certainly popular in New Mexico. All types of providers look for a piece of the action. With hope, the politicos are done batting over gaming as a key matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That is probably hopeful thinking.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
