New Mexico Bingo
New Mexico has a stormy gaming history. 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 cash in on the Indian casino craze. Politics assured that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a working group in Nineteen Ninety to create an accord with New Mexico American Indian tribes. When the panel arrived at an accord with 2 prominent local bands a year later, Governor King declined to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it seemed that Native gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the contract with the Amerindian bands, anti-gaming groups were able to tie the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing the compact, therefore denying the government 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 legislature, to get the ball rolling on a full compact between the State of New Mexico and its Native tribes. Ten years had been squandered for gaming in New Mexico, including Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game operators acquired just $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since that time. 2005 saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is categorically beloved in New Mexico. All kinds of owners try for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting around gambling as an important issue like they did in the 1990’s. That’s most likely hopeful thinking.
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