Bingo in New Mexico

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New Mexico has a rocky gaming background. When the IGRA was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that would not be the situation.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a panel in Nineteen Ninety to create a compact with New Mexico Native tribes. When the task force arrived at an agreement with 2 big local tribes a year later, Governor King declined to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until 1994.

When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Native betting in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the compact with the Native tribes, anti-gaming groups were able to hold the contract up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the compact, thus costing 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 legislature, to get the process moving on a full compact amongst the State of New Mexico and its Amerindian tribes. A decade had been squandered for gaming in New Mexico, including Amerindian casino Bingo.

The nonprofit Bingo business has grown from 1999. In that year, New Mexico charity game operators acquired just $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.

Bingo is apparently beloved in New Mexico. All types of operators look for a slice of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting around gaming as a key matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That is without doubt wishful thinking.