Where the money goes: pensions first, then Build Indiana

L82-7 · Lottery distribution as it touches this county; no town-level receipt documented

No town-level lottery receipt for New Carlisle is documented in any report read for this section, and that absence is itself the town finding: the Hoosier Lottery’s money, after prizes, retailer commissions and expenses, does not flow to towns as towns. The documented course, from the State Budget Agency’s FY2016 Distribution of Lottery and Gaming Revenues and the Build Indiana Fund report (rev. Mar. 8, 2017), is this. First, $60.0 million of lottery profits is transferred from the Lottery Administrative Trust Fund in two $30.0 million streams: $30.0 million to the Pension Relief Fund for local police and fire pensions — “distributed to individual communities each year in accordance with actuarial principles,” in the report’s words, a formula driven by a community’s pension liability, not by its ticket sales — and $30.0 million to the Teachers’ Retirement Fund. Remaining lottery profits go to the Build Indiana Fund, established by the 1989 Lottery Act; with riverboat, pari-mutuel and charity-gaming streams, total lottery-and-gaming deposits to the fund are topped to a $250.0 million fiscal-year level. In FY2016 the Lottery contributed $311,161,269 to total gaming revenue; the Build Indiana Fund received $253,411,269 overall, local units $243,648,836 and the State General Fund $406,807,023 (net of transfers). The Lottery’s current telling (FY2025 Annual Report) keeps the same three-bucket shape: $340.6 million returned to the State in FY2025, funding the Teachers’ Retirement Fund ($30 million), local police and firefighter pensions ($30 million) and the Lottery Surplus Fund — the successor label in current Lottery usage for the residual stream, applied in part to motor-vehicle excise-tax relief — “benefiting Hoosiers in all 92 counties.”

The county course is documented, and it is as close to the town as the published record gets. The FY2016 report’s Table 5 (Distribution of BIF and Lottery Shares into TRF and PERF by County) carries a St. Joseph County row totaling $10,561,971 for the fiscal year and $250,809,736 cumulatively, composed in the report’s garbled-table order of: Excise Tax Reduction $8,510,066 (cumulative $177,464,096); City and Town Police and Fire Pensions $2,015,564 (cumulative $36,505,010); Indiana Technology Fund $36,341 (cumulative $3,797,565); plus cumulative-only lines for Supplemental Tuition Support ($11,357,557), Job Creation and Economic Development ($1,802,848), Build Indiana Fund Local Projects ($17,129,849) and Local Road and Street Account Distribution ($2,752,812). Those are county-aggregate distributions. The report does not break the police-and-fire pension line out to New Carlisle as a named community in the material read, and the town — with a small or volunteer-scaled public-safety footprint relative to South Bend and Mishawaka — cannot be assigned any dollar figure from the county total without invention. New Carlisle teachers participate in the statewide Teachers’ Retirement Fund the lottery feeds, and town vehicle owners benefit from the excise-tax offset the Surplus Fund underwrites; both are state-course benefits touching town residents, not receipts booked by the Town. The row therefore prints at documented size: county documented, town receipt undocumented, state course whole.

Sources:

1. Indiana State Budget Agency, Distribution of Lottery and Gaming Revenues and the Build Indiana Fund, FY2016 (rev. Mar. 8, 2017) — $60.0 million pension/TRF-first rule; Build Indiana Fund mechanics and $250.0 million level; FY2016 totals; Table 5, St. Joseph County row ($10,561,971 FY; $250,809,736 cumulative) with component lines as cited.
2. Hoosier Lottery, Annual Report, Fiscal Year 2025 (hoosierlottery.com) — $340.6 million returned; $30 million Teachers’ Retirement Fund; $30 million local police and firefighters’ pensions; Lottery Surplus Fund; all 92 counties.
3. Hoosier Lottery news release, Oct. 11, 2024 — Teachers’ Retirement Fund, local police and firefighters’ pensions, Lottery Surplus Fund lowering vehicle excise taxes; more than $7.4 billion given back since 1989.
4. State Affairs summary of FY2025 figures — $30 million teachers, $30 million police/fire, about $235 million Lottery Surplus Fund; corroborates the three-bucket split.