Bingo in New Mexico
New Mexico has a complex gaming background. 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 Amerindian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a working group in Nineteen Ninety to draft an accord with New Mexico Native bands. When the working group came to an accord with two prominent local tribes a year later, the Governor refused to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Indian gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the accord with the Amerindian bands, anti-gambling groups were able to hold the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the compact, thus costing the state of New Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico government, to get the ball rolling on a full accord between the Government of New Mexico and its American Indian tribes. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico not for profit game owners acquired only $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo earnings have increased steadily since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the owners.
Bingo is clearly favored in New Mexico. All sorts of operators look for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting around gambling as a key factor like they did in the 90’s. That is without doubt wishful thinking.
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