New Mexico Bingo
Friday, 14. October 2022
New Mexico has a bitter gaming background. When the IGRA was passed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a working group in 1990 to draft a contract with New Mexico American Indian bands. When the task force came to an agreement with 2 prominent local tribes a year later, Governor King refused to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Native wagering in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the accord with the American Indian tribes, anti-gaming groups were able to hold the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the compact, therefore denying the state 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 house, to get the process moving on a full contract amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Indian tribes. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.
The not for profit Bingo industry has grown since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico charity game operators brought in only $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and passed a million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo earnings have grown steadily since then. Two Thousand and Five saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All types of providers look for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting around gambling as a key factor like they did in the 1990’s. That is probably wishful thinking.
Posted in Bingo by Taryn