Bingo in New Mexico
New Mexico has a bitter gambling past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in 1989, 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 assembled a panel in Nineteen Ninety to create an accord with New Mexico Indian bands. When the panel arrived at an accord with 2 big local bands a year later, Governor King refused to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it seemed that Indian gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the compact with the Indian tribes, anti-gambling groups were able to hold the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing a deal, therefore costing the state of New Mexico many 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 process moving on a full contract amongst the State of New Mexico and its American Indian tribes. A decade had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, including American Indian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo business has gotten bigger from 1999. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game operators brought in only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since then. 2005 witnessed the largest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All types of operators look for a piece of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting around gaming as a key matter like they did in the 1990’s. That’s most likely wishful thinking.