New Mexico Bingo
Posted in Casino on 11/08/2017 09:25 am by Esperanza
New Mexico has a rocky gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by Congress in 1989, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Native casino craze. Politics assured that would not be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a working group in Nineteen Ninety to create a compact with New Mexico Native bands. When the panel arrived at an agreement with two prominent local tribes a year later, the Governor declined to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it appeared that Native gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the contract with the Amerindian bands, anti-gaming groups were able to tie the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, therefore denying the government of New Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It required the CNA, signed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the ball rolling on a full accord between the Government of New Mexico and its American Indian tribes. 10 years had been lost for gambling in New Mexico, including Native casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has grown since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico non-profit game owners acquired only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and passed one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo earnings have grown constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is apparently favored in New Mexico. All sorts of operators look for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting around gaming as a hot button factor like they did back in the 1990’s. That is without doubt wishful thinking.