From the fall of 2005 through the summer of 2006, the City of Vicksburg, Warren County and the Vicksburg Warren School District shared in an “extra” $1 million. Where did it come from? Hurricane Katrina.

Casino patrons, unable to reach facilities then being rebuilt on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, inflated the Vicksburg market beyond its normal range — creating a bump in tax revenue. Almost exactly a year after the storm, the revenues here settled back into a pattern of normal, but much slower, growth.

Now, according to a story in the Biloxi Sun-Herald newspaper, tourism officials on the Gulf Coast report that some resort areas in other states are using the ongoing oil spill to lure vacationers to the Atlantic Coast, even though the oil looks as if it could move up the Eastern Seaboard.

It’s not cricket, they say. And it’s not accurate.

Gov. Haley Barbour and many others have affirmed that though an environmental disaster is very much under way, the Mississippi Gulf Coast is still very much open for business. And that includes all vacationers, not just casino patrons.

Anyone planning a trip should stay tuned to the latest factual information, not make changes based on guesswork and certainly not based on opportunistic advertising.

Tourism is a $5.6 billion industry in Mississippi and rarely, if ever, have our schools and other public programs needed every dime of the tax money that tourism generates.

Katrina was real. The Gulf Coast’s casinos were closed. Vicksburg cashed in. But not by deceit.

There’s no requirement that resort ads tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. There should be some sense of shame, however, for falsely and intentionally preying on people’s fears.