New Mexico Bingo
Thursday, 19. December 2019
New Mexico has a bitter gambling past. 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 Indian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a task force in Nineteen Ninety to negotiate a contract with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the working group came to an accord with two prominent local bands a year later, Governor King refused to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Native gaming in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the accord with the Native bands, anti-gaming forces were able to hold the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the deal, thereby costing the state 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 legislature, to get the process moving on a full accord between the Government of New Mexico and its Indian bands. Ten years had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, including Indian casino Bingo.
The not for profit Bingo business has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico non-profit game operators brought in only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo earnings have increased constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the owners.
Bingo is clearly favored in New Mexico. All types of operators look for a piece of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting around gambling as an important matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s probably hopeful thinking.
Posted in Casino by Allisson