New Mexico Bingo

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New Mexico has a rocky gaming background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by Congress in 1989, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Native casino craze. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the case.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a panel in Nineteen Ninety to draft a contract with New Mexico American Indian bands. When the task force arrived at an agreement with 2 prominent local tribes a year later, the Governor declined to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.

When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Native gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the contract with the Amerindian bands, anti-gambling groups were able to tie the accord up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had out stepped 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, passed by the New Mexico house, to get the ball rolling on a full contract between the Government of New Mexico and its American Indian bands. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, which includes Amerindian casino Bingo.

The non-profit Bingo business has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico non-profit game providers acquired only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since then. Two Thousand and Five saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the owners.

Bingo is apparently favored in New Mexico. All sorts of providers try for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting around gaming as an important factor like they did back in the 1990’s. That is without doubt wishful thinking.