New Mexico Bingo
New Mexico has a complex gambling past. When the IGRA was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a task force in Nineteen Ninety to create an accord with New Mexico Amerindian tribes. When the task force came to an agreement with two big local bands a year later, the Governor refused 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 Amerindian gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the accord with the Indian bands, anti-gaming forces were able to tie the accord up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had out stepped his bounds in signing the compact, therefore costing the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It required the CNA, signed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the process moving on a full compact amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Amerindian tribes. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, including Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger from 1999. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game providers brought in only $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have grown steadily since that time. 2005 witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.
Bingo is clearly favored in New Mexico. All types of providers look for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting around gaming as an important matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That is probably wishful thinking.
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