Bingo in New Mexico
New Mexico has a stormy gaming background. When the IGRA was passed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Indian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a working group in 1990 to draft an accord with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the working group came to an agreement with two prominent 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 1995, it appeared that Indian wagering in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the accord with the Amerindian bands, anti-gambling 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 compact, thus denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the process moving on a full contract amongst the State of New Mexico and its Indian bands. A decade had been lost for gambling in New Mexico, including Native casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has increased since 1999. That year, New Mexico charity game owners acquired only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo earnings have increased constantly since that time. 2005 witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All sorts of providers try for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting around gambling as a hot button matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s without doubt hopeful thinking.