New Mexico Bingo
New Mexico has a complex gambling past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Indian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a working group in Nineteen Ninety to draft an accord with New Mexico Indian bands. When the working group arrived at an accord with 2 important local tribes a year later, Governor King declined to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that American Indian wagering in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the accord with the American Indian bands, anti-wagering groups were able to hold the contract up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, thereby denying the state of New Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the process moving on a full accord between the Government of New Mexico and its Amerindian tribes. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, including Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has gotten bigger since 1999. That year, New Mexico not for profit game owners brought in just $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo earnings have grown steadily since that time. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is clearly favored in New Mexico. All sorts of operators try for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting around gaming as a key issue like they did in the 1990’s. That is most likely hopeful thinking.
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