New Mexico Bingo
New Mexico has a stormy gaming background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a task force in Nineteen Ninety to draft a contract with New Mexico Native tribes. When the task force arrived at an accord with two important local bands a year later, the Governor declined to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that Indian wagering in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the contract with the Native bands, anti-gaming groups were able to hold the accord up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing a deal, therefore denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It took the CNA, signed by the New Mexico government, to get the process moving on a full accord between the State of New Mexico and its American Indian tribes. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, including Indian casino Bingo.
The not for profit Bingo business has grown from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game owners acquired only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo earnings have grown steadily since that time. 2005 saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.
Bingo is apparently favored in New Mexico. All sorts of providers look for a slice of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting around gaming as a key issue like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s probably hopeful thinking.
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