The siren’s call of easy money is intoxicating, and can make the worst ideas – like a resort casino in Oxford County – seem plausible. It isn’t, and neither are the promises made by its proponent, Seth Carey and his Evergreen Mountain Enterprises LLC

We don’t buy his claim that an “environmentally friendly” and “rustic” casino nestled quietly in the foothills of Western Maine would be patronized by the types of tourists that flock to the slopes of Sugarloaf and Sunday River each winter.

It’s questionable if the casino’s dedication of some 40 percent of its total gross proceeds for public benefits such as tuition assistance, elderly prescription drugs, and health care for small business is worth its negative impacts.

And it’s eye-rolling to project the casino as stewarded by civic-minded young locals desperate to save the region’s economy, because casino administration has historically required involvement from out-of-state gaming companies.

Yet the movement for a Rumford-area casino stubbornly continues. Rep. John Patrick has now introduced LD 1828 to make a casino legal in Oxford County, which the Rumford Democrat unveiled Wednesday.

We could dredge up stereotypical criticisms: casinos breed social ills, don’t mesh with Maine’s tourism “brand,” and don’t provide windfalls for host communities. Thankfully, real data about the gaming industry in Maine exists.

It isn’t pretty.

Last month, the Center for Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth released its annual assessment of New England’s gaming economy, which for 2007 featured a new entry: Hollywood Slots in Bangor.

The center found Hollywood Slots hasn’t drawn appreciable interest from out-of-state gamblers: an estimated 94 percent of its patrons are Mainers. Meanwhile, the southerly flow of Maine residents to the major casino resorts in Connecticut – Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun – remained the same.

“The market entry of another convenience gambling facility – Hollywood Slots in Bangor, Maine – has not reversed the flow of gambling traffic from Maine to Connecticut, which remains stable at this point,” the center found.

Mainers comprised about 1 percent of visitors to the major Connecticut casinos and spent about $33 million there in 2006, of which $4.5 million went into that state’s coffers. Hollywood Slots generated $37.5 million in net revenues in 2006, by comparison, with $12.5 million going to Maine.

So even with a gambling house in their backyard, just as many Mainers traveled to the Connecticut casinos as before. And Hollywood Slots seems to have made it easier for just Mainers to gamble, but is failing to attract out-of-state dollars. (About $2 million overall, the study said.)

These figures beg serious questions of whether a casino in rural Oxford County can attract new tourist dollars, and whether gaming in Maine can support another outlet. At this point, the numbers don’t support it.

Neither should the Legislature.