New Mexico Bingo
New Mexico has a complex gambling 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 get on the Indian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a working group in Nineteen Ninety to draft a contract with New Mexico Native bands. When the task force came to an agreement with 2 prominent local bands a year later, Governor King declined to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Amerindian gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the compact with the Amerindian bands, anti-gaming forces were able to tie the contract up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing a deal, thereby costing the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico house, to get the ball rolling on a full compact between the Government of New Mexico and its Indian bands. A decade had been lost for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo business has grown from 1999. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game operators acquired only $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo earnings have grown constantly since that time. 2005 witnessed the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.
Bingo is apparently favored in New Mexico. All types of operators look for a piece of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting around gambling as an important factor like they did back in the 1990’s. That is most likely wishful thinking.