Bingo in New Mexico
New Mexico has a rocky gaming background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by the House in 1989, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Indian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a task force in Nineteen Ninety to discuss a contract with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the task force arrived at an accord with two important local bands 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 appeared that Native gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the compact with the Native bands, anti-gambling forces were able to hold the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing the compact, therefore costing the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It took the CNA, signed by the New Mexico house, to get the process moving on a full compact between the State of New Mexico and its Native bands. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Amerindian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has grown since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico non-profit game owners brought in just $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo earnings have increased constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the owners.
Bingo is categorically favored in New Mexico. All kinds of providers look for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting over gaming as an important issue like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.