This headline in the Baltimore Sun caught my attention because it just seemed so weird. Then again, it’s Baltimore so things are never terribly normal to begin with. The Sun declares that Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott is considering selling the Hilton Hotel. That immediately raised some obvious questions. Why does the Mayor have a Hilton Hotel? And why might be be selling it? It turns out it’s not technically his hotel, but it does belong to the city. As to why it might be put up on the auction block, it turns out that the municipal government isn’t really very good at running a business (who could have guessed?) and it’s costing Baltimore a lot of money.

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said Wednesday he would consider selling the financially beleaguered Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor hotel, a move that past mayors have ruled out in light of the likely financial loss the city would suffer.

“We are open to anything,” Scott said during a City Hall news conference. “As we move forward with reimagining downtown and looking at how things operate, I’m quite open to someone coming in to operate the hotel and not having the city operate it.”

Scott’s statement came on the heels of a decision Wednesday morning by the Baltimore Board of Estimates to award a $989,000 grant to the city-owned hotel to be used for administrative costs that hotel operators have struggled to pay as it struggles to recover from the pandemic.

So the city operates the Hilton Hotel located at the Inner Harbor. They haven’t managed to pay the administrative fees that are owed so the City Council was compelled to approve a nearly one million dollar grant (not a loan) to bail them out. And where did that money come from? It’s part of the money Baltimore received from the American Rescue Plan Act, which was supposed to go to help with pandemic recovery costs. In other words, all of us are paying for it.

The city claims that the Hilton is “struggling” as it “recovers from the pandemic” so the use of the funds is legitimate. I don’t know if anyone has mentioned it to the Mayor or the City Council, but the pandemic has been over for a while and the nation has reopened for business. Of course, so much of the pandemic relief funds have been frittered away on things that had nothing to do with the pandemic that I’ve lost track at this point.

Still, if the Hilton truly is “struggling” financially, perhaps the Mayor should take a look at the actual reasons why. Is it perhaps because it’s poorly run? Since this is Baltimore, have they checked to see if someone has had their fingers in the till? Or there might be a far more obvious answer available. It’s a hotel. Hotels rely on visitors willing to pay to stay there. The city is so plagued by crime, corruption, and violence that people don’t want to go there. Tourism has recovered somewhat since the pandemic shutdown, but it’s still nowhere near what it was before 2020.

But perhaps the overall problem can also be found in the reality that putting the government in charge of anything that properly belongs in the private sector is almost never a good idea. Most people who run for elected office have never operated a business. (There are a few exceptions like Donald Trump, but not a lot.) Most of them probably couldn’t operate a lemonade stand and turn a profit. But now you’ve put yourselves in charge of running a major brand hotel and it’s losing money. Pardon me while I faint from shock.

So yes, Mayor Scott, by all means, consider selling off the Hilton. Just make sure you sell it to someone who actually knows how to operate a major hotel and not just one of your buddies that you give a grant to so they can buy it. Otherwise, you’ll wind up right back where you are now. I just wanted to plant a flag in the sand on this issue now, because I’ve been observing Baltimore’s government for a long time and I could see it playing out exactly that way.