By Troy Hudson

On November 7, the day this newspaper is published, Mainers will once again head to the polls to vote on two ballot initiatives and a handful of other matters, provided lingering 2016 election fatigue hasn’t caused us to throw up our hands at the very idea of the democratic process. While there’s nothing as sexy as choosing the leader of the free world on this year’s ballot, one question that is generating some heat in the state is Question 1, a measure to decide whether to allow a new casino to operate in York County.

By now, trying to sway your opinion on Question 1 is a moot point. Plenty of money has been spent by both sides to convince you that a new casino in York County would be either a magnificent blessing to Maine or merely a scam that would benefit nobody other than “Shady” Shawn Scott, the casino entrepreneur who would get exclusive rights to the proposed business. But perhaps we should question whether state-sanctioned gambling in general is really the economic fix that its proponents claim it is.

Maine only legalized slot machines in 2005 and is currently home to just two casinos, Oxford Casino in Oxford and Hollywood Casino in Bangor. Both offer electronic gambling machines as well as traditional games, and together pulled in $129.8 million in revenue in 2015. Both are lauded as economic boons to their respective regions. Oxford Casino famously sends an impressive 25% of revenue to the Department of Education, and portions of their revenue go to other charitable causes throughout the state, as mandated by the State Gambling Control Board.

Benefits like these are extremely appealing to a revenue-starved state like Maine, as they have been for many states before us. But we have only to look to these other states to see that state-sanctioned gambling rarely lives up to its promises.

Job creation is an oft-touted selling point of casinos, but in a famous example, New Jersey’s Atlantic City has never met expectations in this regard. Despite new jobs created by the casinos themselves, the fact that hundreds of bars and restaurants closed in response to the new gambling industry offset much of the net gains in employment. A special commission initiated by Governor Chris Christie in 1999 found that public perception of Atlantic City and other gambling hubs is that they are “unclean and unsafe,” driving away customers who are interested in anything other than gambling.

Part of this reputation for being unsafe is founded in very real upticks in crime rates following casino openings. A comprehensive report published in The Review of Economic Statistics in 2006 examined 167 counties with casinos that had been in operation for at least 20 years. In those counties, the authors estimated, gambling accounted for 5.5 percent to 30 percent of serious crimes. This is not surprising considering the National Research Council estimated in 1999 that 1.5 percent of adults were “pathological” gamblers and that another 3.9 percent were “problem” gamblers. Consider also that a Montana report in 1998 found that problem gamblers accounted for 36 percent of revenue from electronic gambling devices. Gambling does not generate new wealth so much as move it from the lower classes to the bank accounts of casino owners.

Mainers should look beyond the short-term gains promised by casino moguls and consider the reputation of our state, which, once tarnished, may take a generation or more to re-establish. Just because casinos have been profitable in the short time they’ve been allowed to operate in Maine does not mean they are the way forward for us as a state. If our leaders can’t find a more viable and ethical way of sustaining our budget, then perhaps we should elect leaders who can.