Government Operating Outside its Scope....Again

Can somebody explain to me what the hell a Sailing Hall of Fame has to do with the Maryland Stadium Authority? That seems to be the entire problem in building a new Sailing Hall of Fame in Annapolis is that the State seems to be in the middle of it, where it naturally does not belong:

State involvement through the Stadium Authority is completely out of line, but not out of recent practices for the authority. The Stadium Authority was originally created to build Camden Yards and then build what eventually turned into M&T Bank Stadium. Of course the scope wound up going much farther than that, though I guess if you squint a university Commons Building kinda looks like a Stadium.

Furthermore, does anybody really think that downtown Annapolis needs a Sailing Hall of Fame smack in the middle of it? It seems to me that this would be the kind of urban renewal project that so disturbs a historic area that it would be the kind of thing that Democrats would hate to see in place. I mean, I certainly don't want the view of City Dock disturbed by the construction of some monstrous, unnecessary building. But of course, Annapolis Mayor Ellen Moyer loves the concept, even if there is likely no discernible economic benefit to the city from its construction. There is certainly no benefit to state taxpayers who seem like they are going to get stuck with part of the bill.

The only way to fix this is through two solutions. The short term solution is to pull state funding for the construction of this Hall of Fame complex and allow it to continue only with the use of private money. Second, the General Assembly needs to legislatively remove the ability of the Maryland Stadium Authority to build new projects, thus restricting them to managing the projects currently under their purview until the facilities can be privatized.

For more info on the Sailing Hall of Fame and it's relationship to our Capital City, my Red Maryland colleague Brian Gill has an excellent post on the matter.