04.02
New Mexico Bingo
New Mexico has a stormy gambling past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Native casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a task force in 1990 to negotiate a compact with New Mexico Native bands. When the working group came to an accord with two prominent local tribes a year later, Governor King declined to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that Indian gaming in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the compact with the Indian bands, anti-gaming groups were able to tie the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, therefore denying the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees 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 between the State of New Mexico and its American Indian bands. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, including American Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger from 1999. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game owners acquired only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and passed one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since that time. 2005 saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is clearly favored in New Mexico. All kinds of providers look for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting around gaming as an important factor like they did in the 90’s. That’s most likely hopeful thinking.