New Mexico Bingo
Posted in Casino on 03/04/2023 06:25 am by Jaylon
New Mexico has a bitter gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to cash in on the American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that would not be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a task force in Nineteen Ninety to negotiate a contract with New Mexico Native tribes. When the panel arrived at an accord with 2 important local bands a year later, Governor King refused to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until 1994.
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 passed the accord with the American Indian tribes, anti-gambling forces were able to tie the accord up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing a deal, 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 contract between the State of New Mexico and its Amerindian tribes. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, including Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game owners acquired only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and passed one million dollars in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo earnings have grown constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the providers.
Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All kinds of owners try for a piece of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting around gambling as a key matter like they did back in the 90’s. That’s most likely wishful thinking.