Hammond's Casino Take Is Sliding Toward $20 Million. The Mayor's Budget Still Climbs to $170 Million.

Hammond City Hall. Photo by Lotzman Katzman via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0.

“All the big gamblers used to go to Hammond, and now there’s a lot more options,” Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. said, in remarks reported this week by The Times of Northwest Indiana.

He was explaining why one of the city's steadiest sources of money isn't steady anymore. McDermott now expects Hammond to collect between $20 million and $24 million in gaming taxes next year. At its peak, that fund brought in more than $35 million a year, which puts next year's estimate at least $11 million below the good years.

Yet the spending plan he handed the City Council on Tuesday, Oct. 13, is bigger than the one it replaces: $170 million for 2027, up from $167 million this year. McDermott called the two budgets “very similar.” The council approved the first and second readings that night, and the third and final vote is scheduled for the Oct. 26 Common Council meeting.

A scholarship riding on casinos and water

The gaming slide matters most for College Bound, the decade-plus program that pays eligible Hammond students up to $10,500 a year for four years at Indiana colleges and universities. McDermott has told The Times the program has historically been paid for with gaming taxes, a fund he concedes peaked years ago and has shrunk steadily since Hard Rock Casino opened in neighboring Gary.

The 2027 proposal keeps College Bound at $3.5 million, the same as 2026. Part of what's propping it up is water. Hammond sells water to neighboring communities, and the budget counts on $12 million from those sales next year, money McDermott has credited with keeping the scholarship afloat.

“There’s a lot more competition now,” the mayor said, pointing to Hard Rock and to Rivers Casino in Des Plaines, Illinois. Horseshoe Hammond is still the city's biggest taxpayer, with $175 million in assessed value, about 4.5 percent of the city's total, according to the budget proposal.

Tax relief on one side of the ledger, rising costs on the other

The budget also lands as Senate Enrolled Act 1, the state's property-tax relief law, cuts into what Indiana cities can collect. McDermott pitched economic development as the answer, pointing to $6 million in payments in lieu of property taxes from major developments and a smaller drag from the state's property-tax circuit breakers, The Times reported.

Other lines keep climbing. Landfill and recycling service costs are each up 5 percent, and police and fire pension contributions are up 3.2 percent.

A year ago, the mayor sounded more alarmed. At a Mayor's Night Out at Harding Elementary School, he warned residents that SB1 would leave Hammond facing an estimated $15 million budget gap unless the state stepped in, according to a Citizen Portal account of the meeting. The plan on the table now is $3 million larger than this year's.

Questions worth answering before Oct. 26

Nothing in The Times' report suggests the budget is out of balance. Still, a city leaning harder on payments negotiated with developers and on water sold to its neighbors owes taxpayers some specifics before the final vote.

• Which developments are paying the $6 million in lieu of taxes, and how many years are those deals locked in?

• If gaming revenue comes in at the low end of the $20 million to $24 million range, or under it, what covers College Bound?

• How much of the $3 million increase is fixed costs like pensions and trash hauling, and how much is new spending?

The Times set the budget against a push to bring the Chicago Bears to Hammond. Its report doesn't say the 2027 proposal includes any money for that effort, and residents should watch whether that changes. The council has ten days to ask its questions before the final reading on Oct. 26.

Sources: The Times of Northwest Indiana, Oct. 14, 2026; Citizen Portal, Oct. 30, 2025.

Written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers.