Former MSA chair Kelso: Don’t just save jobs, save Oriole Park oversight
I read with great interest Jeff Barker’s article, “As lease nears end, Orioles and Maryland may consider development rights separately” (Nov. 27), and I agree that the portion of the memorandum of understanding relating to development rights needs to be totally reconsidered. When and if such reconsideration takes place, the Maryland Stadium Authority must be a partner in any redevelopment, and the state must have an opportunity to benefit from any upside success.
While I also appreciate negotiators’ attempts to protect employees they had originally planned to dismiss, turning the MSA, or any state agency, into a staffing firm makes little sense. The only solution is to remove the provision of the MOU which creates the employee problem in the first place — the dismantling of the MSA’s role at Camden Yards.
Under current terms of the MOU, the MSA’s statutory role managing the Camden Yards complex is eliminated. By doing so, the Orioles will control how billions of taxpayer dollars are spent with no oversight by the MSA staff, the board of the MSA and, most importantly, the Board of Public Works. This is unheard of. Meanwhile, the Orioles would, solely, decide how maintenance on the stadium will be done and how much they will spend on it annually with no MSA oversight.
Eliminating the MSA’s and BPW’s historic functions means no state-run procurements, no goals for Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) participation and no requirements for prevailing wage.
If the Orioles do not maintain the stadiums properly, the taxpayers of Maryland will once again be on the hook for the additional money to correct these problems. Because of the parity clause in both team leases, the Ravens will derive this exact same benefit — from state coffers. Essentially, both teams will have the benefits of ownership of the stadiums without any controls by the taxpayers who actually do own them.
Rather than accepting adhesive bandages for employees, negotiators must address the most egregious issue — the elimination of the MSA and BPW oversight of Oriole Park. This should be a non-starter. MSA stands, and has stood, in the shoes of the taxpayers and protected their interests since it was formed in 1986. The results speak for themselves.
— Thomas Kelso, Phoenix
The writer served as chairman of the Maryland Stadium Authority from 2015 to 2023.