New Mexico Bingo
Thursday, 1. October 2015
New Mexico has a bitter gambling background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by Congress in 1989, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Native casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that would not be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a panel in 1990 to create a compact with New Mexico Amerindian bands. When the panel came to an agreement with two important 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 Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that Native gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the compact with the Amerindian bands, anti-gambling forces were able to hold the contract up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had out stepped his bounds in signing the compact, thus denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico government, to get the ball rolling on a full compact between the Government of New Mexico and its Indian bands. A decade had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, which includes American Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger from 1999. In that year, New Mexico charity game operators acquired only $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and passed one million dollars in 2001. Not for profit Bingo earnings have grown constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the greatest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the owners.
Bingo is certainly popular in New Mexico. All kinds of providers try for a bit of the action. With hope, the politicos are done batting around gaming as a hot button issue like they did back in the 1990’s. That is without doubt hopeful thinking.
Posted in Bingo by Taryn