New Mexico Bingo
Posted in Casino on 10/19/2015 06:21 pm by Dakota
New Mexico has a complex gambling background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Native casino craze. Politics assured that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a working group in 1990 to negotiate a compact with New Mexico Native bands. When the task force came to an agreement with two important local tribes a year later, Governor King declined to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that Native wagering in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the accord with the Amerindian bands, anti-gaming groups were able to hold the accord up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the deal, therefore costing the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico government, to get the ball rolling on a full compact between 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 nonprofit Bingo business has increased from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game operators 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 earnings have increased constantly since then. 2005 saw the greatest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is apparently beloved in New Mexico. All sorts of providers try for a bit of the action. With hope, the politicos are done batting over gaming as a key factor like they did back in the 1990’s. That is most likely hopeful thinking.