New Mexico Bingo
Sunday, 13. September 2015
New Mexico has a rocky gambling past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to cash in on the Native casino craze. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a task force in 1990 to draft a contract with New Mexico Amerindian bands. When the panel arrived at an agreement with 2 important local tribes a year later, the Governor refused to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Indian gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the compact with the Native bands, anti-gambling forces were able to tie the accord up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, therefore 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 accord amongst the State of New Mexico and its Indian bands. A decade had been squandered for gaming in New Mexico, which includes Amerindian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has grown since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico charity game operators acquired just $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo earnings have grown constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.
Bingo is categorically favored in New Mexico. All kinds of operators look for a piece of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting around gambling as a hot button issue like they did in the 1990’s. That’s probably hopeful thinking.
Posted in Casino by Chace