New Mexico Bingo
Monday, 31. August 2015
New Mexico has a bitter gambling background. When the IGRA was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would 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 assembled a task force in Nineteen Ninety to create a compact with New Mexico American Indian bands. When the panel arrived at an accord with two big local bands a year later, the Governor declined to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it appeared that American Indian betting in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the accord with the American Indian tribes, anti-wagering groups were able to hold the accord up in courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing a deal, thus denying the state of New Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It required the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico government, to get the ball rolling on a full contract between the Government of New Mexico and its Indian tribes. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Amerindian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has grown from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game providers acquired just $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and passed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since that time. 2005 saw the greatest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All types of owners try for a piece of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting around gaming as a key issue like they did in the 1990’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.
Posted in Casino by Gwendolyn