10.28
Bingo in New Mexico
New Mexico has a rocky gambling past. When the IGRA was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a panel in 1990 to discuss a compact with New Mexico Amerindian bands. When the working group came to an agreement with two prominent local bands a year later, Governor King declined to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it appeared that American Indian gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the accord with the Indian bands, anti-gaming forces were able to tie the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had out stepped his bounds in signing the deal, therefore costing the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It required the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico government, to get the ball rolling on a full compact between the State of New Mexico and its Amerindian tribes. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has grown from 1999. In that year, New Mexico charity game providers brought in just $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is apparently beloved in New Mexico. All types of providers try for a piece of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting around gambling as a key matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That is without doubt wishful thinking.