03.10
New Mexico Bingo
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 Amerindian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a working group in Nineteen Ninety to discuss an accord with New Mexico Native tribes. When the task force arrived at an accord with 2 prominent local bands a year later, the Governor refused to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it appeared that American Indian wagering in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the contract with the American Indian tribes, 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 a deal, thus denying the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the CNA, passed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the ball rolling on a full accord between the State of New Mexico and its Native tribes. A decade had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, which includes American Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has grown from 1999. That year, New Mexico non-profit game operators acquired just $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.
Bingo is apparently beloved in New Mexico. All sorts of operators look for a piece of the pie. With hope, the politicians are done batting around gambling as a hot button factor like they did back in the 90’s. That is without doubt hopeful thinking.