New Mexico Bingo
New Mexico has a stormy gaming background. When the IGRA was passed by Congress in 1989, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Indian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a task force in Nineteen Ninety to draft a contract with New Mexico Amerindian tribes. When the panel came to an accord with two big local tribes a year later, the Governor refused to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it appeared that Native betting in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the contract with the Amerindian bands, anti-gambling forces were able to hold the accord up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that the Governor had out stepped 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 required the CNA, signed by the New Mexico house, to get the process moving on a full contract between the State of New Mexico and its Indian bands. Ten years had been lost for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo business has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico non-profit game operators acquired only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and passed a million dollars in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have increased constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the greatest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the owners.
Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All sorts of owners look for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting over gambling as a hot button matter like they did in the 90’s. That’s without doubt wishful thinking.
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