Bingo in New Mexico
New Mexico has a rocky gambling background. When the IGRA was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to cash in 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 create an accord with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the working group arrived at an agreement with 2 big local bands a year later, the Governor declined to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it seemed that Amerindian gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the accord with the Indian bands, anti-gambling groups were able to hold the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled 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 required the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the ball rolling on a full contract amongst the Government of New Mexico and its American Indian tribes. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, including American Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game operators brought in just $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since then. 2005 saw the greatest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the providers.
Bingo is certainly popular in New Mexico. All types of operators look for a piece of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting around gaming as a hot button issue like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.
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