New Mexico Bingo
Posted in Casino on 10/01/2023 02:25 am by Dakota
New Mexico has a rocky gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Indian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a panel in 1990 to discuss a compact with New Mexico Native tribes. When the working group came to an agreement with two important local tribes a year later, Governor King refused to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it seemed that Indian gaming in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the compact with the Amerindian tribes, anti-wagering groups were able to tie the accord up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the deal, thereby denying the state 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 legislature, to get the process moving on a full accord amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Amerindian bands. Ten years had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, including Native casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has gotten bigger from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico not for profit game providers brought in just $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and passed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo earnings have increased steadily since then. 2005 saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is clearly beloved in New Mexico. All kinds of providers look for a slice of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting around gambling as a hot button matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s without doubt hopeful thinking.