Bingo in New Mexico

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New Mexico has a rocky gambling background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Amerindian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the case.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a working group in 1990 to create an accord with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the working group came to an agreement with two important local bands a year later, Governor King refused to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until 1994.

When a new governor took over in 1995, it seemed that Native betting in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the accord with the American Indian tribes, anti-gaming groups were able to hold the accord up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that the Governor had out stepped 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 took the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico government, to get the process moving on a full accord amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Native tribes. A decade had been lost for gambling in New Mexico, which includes American Indian casino Bingo.

The non-profit Bingo business has gotten bigger from 1999. That year, New Mexico not for profit game owners acquired only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have grown steadily since then. 2005 witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.

Bingo is certainly popular in New Mexico. All sorts of owners look for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting over gaming as a hot button matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.