New Mexico Bingo
New Mexico has a complex gaming past. When the IGRA was passed by Congress in 1989, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Native casino craze. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a panel in Nineteen Ninety to draft an accord with New Mexico Native tribes. When the working group arrived at an agreement with two big local tribes a year later, Governor King declined to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it appeared that Native gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the accord with the Amerindian tribes, anti-gambling groups were able to tie the accord up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing a deal, thereby costing 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 process moving on a full contract amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Amerindian tribes. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Indian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo business has gotten bigger from 1999. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game providers brought in just $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars 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 operators.
Bingo is apparently beloved in New Mexico. All sorts of providers try for a bit of the pie. With hope, the politicos are through batting over gambling as an important issue like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.
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