Bingo in New Mexico
by Stanley on Thursday, August 18th, 2022
New Mexico has a rocky gambling background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed 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 would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a working group in Nineteen Ninety to negotiate a compact with New Mexico Indian bands. When the panel arrived at an accord with 2 big local bands a year later, the Governor refused to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it appeared that Native gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the accord with the American Indian bands, anti-wagering groups were able to hold the accord up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had out stepped his bounds in signing the accord, thus 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 legislature, to get the process moving on a full accord amongst the State of New Mexico and its Native bands. A decade had been lost for gaming in New Mexico, which includes Amerindian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has gotten bigger from 1999. In that year, New Mexico charity game providers brought in just $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded one million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have grown steadily since then. 2005 witnessed the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the owners.
Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All sorts of owners look for a slice of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting around gambling as a hot button matter like they did in the 1990’s. That is most likely wishful thinking.
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