Bingo in New Mexico
New Mexico has a stormy gambling past. When the IGRA was signed by the House in 1989, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Amerindian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a working group in Nineteen Ninety to discuss a compact with New Mexico Amerindian tribes. When the panel arrived at an accord with two important local bands 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 seemed that Native betting in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the contract with the Indian bands, anti-gaming forces were able to tie the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that the Governor had out stepped his bounds in signing the compact, 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 ball rolling on a full compact amongst the State of New Mexico and its Native tribes. A decade had been squandered for gaming in New Mexico, which includes American Indian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game operators acquired just $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since then. 2005 saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the owners.
Bingo is categorically beloved in New Mexico. All kinds of providers try for a piece of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting around gaming as a key factor like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s without doubt hopeful thinking.