New Mexico Bingo
New Mexico has a stormy gaming background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in 1989, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Amerindian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that would not be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a task force in 1990 to draft a compact with New Mexico American Indian bands. When the panel came to an agreement with two big local tribes a year later, Governor King declined to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Amerindian betting in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the contract with the Amerindian bands, anti-gambling forces were able to hold the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court ruled that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the compact, thus costing the government of New Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It required the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico house, to get the ball rolling on a full accord between the State of New Mexico and its Indian tribes. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, which includes Amerindian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has grown since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game operators acquired only $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have increased constantly since that time. 2005 witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is certainly beloved in New Mexico. All sorts of operators try for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting around gambling as a hot button factor like they did in the 1990’s. That’s most likely wishful thinking.
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