New Mexico Bingo
New Mexico has a bitter gambling past. When the IGRA was passed by the House in 1989, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Native casino craze. Politics assured that would not be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a working group in Nineteen Ninety to negotiate a contract with New Mexico Amerindian bands. When the task force arrived at an accord with 2 prominent local tribes a year later, the Governor declined 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 gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the contract with the Indian bands, anti-gaming groups were able to hold the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing the deal, thus denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the CNA, signed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the ball rolling on a full contract between the State of New Mexico and its Indian bands. A decade had been squandered for gaming in New Mexico, including Amerindian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game owners brought in only $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and passed a million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the greatest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the owners.
Bingo is categorically favored in New Mexico. All kinds of owners look for a piece of the action. With hope, the politicos are done batting over gambling as an important matter like they did in the 1990’s. That’s without doubt wishful thinking.