New Mexico Bingo
New Mexico has a rocky gaming background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by Congress in 1989, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the American Indian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a task force in 1990 to draft a contract with New Mexico Native bands. When the task force arrived at an agreement with two important local tribes a year later, Governor King declined to sign the agreement. He held 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 a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the contract with the Native bands, anti-gaming forces were able to hold the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the compact, thereby denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It took the CNA, passed by the New Mexico house, to get the ball rolling on a full accord between the Government of New Mexico and its Amerindian bands. Ten years had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, which includes American Indian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has increased from 1999. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game operators brought in only $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since then. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.
Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All sorts of operators try for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting over gaming as a key issue like they did back in the 1990’s. That is without doubt hopeful thinking.