The hype over building a new casino/hotel complex in Toronto is starting to resemble the hype over building SkyDome in the 1980s.

Considering what a mixed blessing SkyDome, now the Rogers Centre, has been, it’s time for some adult supervision of the process that will lead to the political decision whether Toronto gets a new casino or not.

While Mayor Rob Ford supports it, I’m not convinced a casino will be good for Toronto, but that’s city council’s call to make.

The problem is that with half-a-dozen U.S. and Canadian mega-developers, including MGM Resorts, Caesars Entertainment, and, as of Friday, Oxford Properties Group, prowling the corridors of power at City Hall, promising councillors every conceivable bell and whistle in return for support of their various multi-billion-dollar proposals, the lack of public input has been alarming.

Any one of these gambling/hotel mega-complexes proposed for everywhere from the Port Lands to the Metro Convention Centre to Exhibition Place would impose huge new pressures on the city’s already badly-congested downtown core.

And yet when a few dozen Toronto residents — both proponents and opponents — attended a meeting at City Hall last week to discuss casino zoning issues, Coun. Giorgio Mammoliti absurdly described it as an “illegal” gathering, dismissing it as “the City Hall show” and that “the only thing missing are the cancan girls.”

Nonsense. The real “cancan” show is going on in councillors’ offices, orchestrated by high-powered executives and lobbyists for the competing casino operators.

They’re promising councillors everything from millions of dollars in new property taxes, to thousands of new jobs, to, in one case, a new permanent home for Cirque de Soleil in Toronto, in order to seal the deal in their favour.

Adding to the pressure on council to reach a decision quickly is Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. Chairman Paul Godfrey’s deadline that council must decide on whether it wants a casino by early 2013, or the province will move the project to a willing municipality elsewhere in the GTA.

Godfrey is my former boss at the Sun whom I view as one of the great city builders of Toronto in both his public and private roles as everything from a former Metro chairman, to president of the Blue Jays, to his current position as President and CEO of Postmedia Network. He’s also done a good job of cleaning up the scandal-plagued OLG.

But, just as I disagreed with him years ago about SkyDome, of which he was the pre-eminent booster and supporter, I don’t agree it’s his place, as a political appointee of Premier Dalton McGuinty, to dictate the timing of an important decision about approving a giant casino/hotel complex to city council.

McGuinty’s interest in overhauling the gaming industry in Ontario — a central part of which is building a massive new casino in the GTA — isn’t based on altruism.

It’s based on McGuinty’s need to have the OLG return as much profit to the government as possible from gambling, because McGuinty desperately needs it to fund health care, especially in light of his spectacular fiscal mismanagement of the Ontario budget, including the eHealth and Ornge scandals.

The job of Toronto councillors is to dispassionately weigh the increased jobs, tourism and tax base a casino-hotel would bring against problems such as more traffic congestion, new pressures on already stressed public infrastructure and the rise in social problems that accompany gambling.

And to remember that industry-generated polls claiming to show public support for a casino should be taken with a grain of salt, since such polls can be made to show anything, depending on how questions are asked.

Finally, councillors need to remember they work for us, not casino operators.