New Mexico Bingo

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New Mexico has a stormy gambling background. When the IGRA was passed by the House in 1989, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Indian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that would not be the case.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a panel in Nineteen Ninety to create a compact with New Mexico American Indian tribes. When the panel arrived at an agreement with 2 big local tribes a year later, Governor King refused to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.

When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Indian gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the accord with the Amerindian bands, anti-gambling groups were able to hold the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, therefore denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.

It took the CNA, passed by the New Mexico government, to get the ball rolling on a full accord between the Government of New Mexico and its Native bands. A decade had been squandered for gaming in New Mexico, which includes Indian casino Bingo.

The non-profit Bingo industry has gotten bigger from 1999. That year, New Mexico non-profit game operators acquired just $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo earnings have grown constantly since then. 2005 saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.

Bingo is certainly beloved in New Mexico. All sorts of operators look for a slice of the pie. With hope, the politicians are done batting around gambling as a key issue like they did in the 1990’s. That’s without doubt hopeful thinking.