Bingo in New Mexico...
Bingo in New Mexico
Date Posted: December 21st, 2015
New Mexico has a stormy gaming past. When the IGRA was signed by the House in 1989, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that wouldn't be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a working group in 1990 to negotiate an accord with New Mexico Amerindian tribes. When the working group arrived at an accord with 2 big local bands a year later, Governor King refused to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Indian gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the contract with the Native bands, anti-gaming groups were able to tie the accord up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing a deal, therefore costing the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees 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 contract between the Government of New Mexico and its American Indian bands. A decade had been lost for gaming in New Mexico, including American Indian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has grown since 1999. That year, New Mexico non-profit game owners acquired only $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the owners.
Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All types of owners look for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting over gambling as an important matter like they did in the 1990's. That's without doubt wishful thinking.
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