Bingo in New Mexico

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New Mexico has a stormy gaming background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the American Indian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the case.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a task force in Nineteen Ninety to create a compact with New Mexico Native bands. When the task force arrived at an accord with two big local bands a year later, Governor King refused to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until 1994.

When a new governor took office in 1995, it appeared that Native gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the compact with the American Indian bands, anti-gambling forces were able to hold the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the compact, thus denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.

It took 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 American Indian bands. A decade had been lost for gaming in New Mexico, which includes Indian casino Bingo.

The not for profit Bingo business has gotten bigger from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico charity game owners brought in only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo earnings have grown constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five saw the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.

Bingo is categorically beloved in New Mexico. All sorts of providers try for a slice of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting around gaming as an important matter like they did in the 1990’s. That’s without doubt wishful thinking.