New Mexico Bingo
New Mexico has a stormy gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that would not be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a panel in 1990 to discuss a contract with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the task force arrived at an accord with 2 prominent local bands a year later, Governor King declined to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it appeared that Amerindian gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the compact with the Indian bands, anti-wagering forces were able to hold the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the compact, therefore denying the state 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 government, to get the ball rolling on a full accord amongst the State of New Mexico and its American Indian bands. Ten years had been lost for gaming in New Mexico, including Amerindian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo business has grown from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico charity game owners acquired only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have grown steadily since then. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the owners.
Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All types of providers try for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting around gaming as a hot button factor like they did back in the 1990’s. That is probably wishful thinking.
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