It’s time again for our annual turkey shoot.

Each year we take aim, with a healthy dose of verbal buckshot, at the most ill-considered, inane or just outright dumb proposals, decisions and projects in the world of business, politics and real estate here in the Bay State.

State and local officials have been kind to us this year, producing a bumper crop of bad ideas, from sitting on billions of federal relief dollars to pushing for a return of rent control.

This year, Maine voters are making a cameo appearance as well with their move to kill an electric transmission line needed in the battle again climate change.

Without further ado, let’s roast those turkeys!

Slow-as-Molasses Legislators

The Bay State has been sitting on nearly $4 billion in federal relief aid for months. Plans have been floated for everything from affordable housing to the resettlement of Afghan refugees, but the way things are going now it may be months more before those dollars finally get out the door. House and Senate leaders pushed back hard when Gov. Charlie Baker proposed spending the bulk of the money on easing the housing crisis and spurring the local economy back in June.

I argued in this space against giving state legislative leaders free rein over the federal dollars, predicting months – or more – of delays amid all sorts of backroom finagling. Looks like House Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka have lived up to my low expectations.

The latest word is: The money may not get allocated until next year.

Short-Sighted North Andover

The Merrimack River town doled out $27 million in tax incentives to Amazon last year to build a huge new distribution center, bucking protests from local unions and other opponents. Amazon, one of the world’s richest corporations, hardly needs this largesse.

But more critically, town officials missed the larger point – it’s North Andover, and towns like it, that have the bargaining leverage here not the other way around. Amazon, which needs distribution locations to reach its customers in the Boston area and can’t just set up these distributions anywhere. They need these locations and the local political support to push these plans through.

NIMBY Quincy Politicians

The mini-tent city at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard in Boston has grabbed headlines for months now, a magnet for the homeless, addicted, destitute and desperate.

But it’s odd that the political and media heat has been almost exclusively trained Boston and its political leadership, particularly on former Mayor Kim Janey and her successor, Mayor Michelle Wu.

After all, it has been Quincy’s NIMBY refusal to let Boston replace the bridge to Long Island that forced the closure of the treatment center there, triggering the current crisis.

A Misguided Rent Control Proposal

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu wants to bring back some form of rent control, or what she is calling “rent stabilization.” With tenants across the city struggling to pay their bills in one of the country’s most expensive housing markets, rent control certainly has a strong emotional appeal.

But there is a lot of evidence from past experiences in Boston and other cities that rent control, at least in its classic form of directly capping or restricting rent increases, puts the kibosh on the construction of new apartments. Needless to say, these new units are desperately needed to rectify a chronic housing shortage.

There’s got to be a better way of protecting vulnerable tenants without taking a baseball bat to the rental market.

Maine’s Ornery Electorate

The citizens of the Pine Street State certainly stuck it to us, their neighbors to the south, when they voted earlier in this month in favor of a referendum that threatens to kill a significant initiative in the battle against climate change. Major fossil fuel companies backed the referendum – Canadian hydropower is bad for their own bottom lines.

Scott Van Voorhis

The referendum has imperiled construction of a $1 billion transmission line across Maine, connecting hydropower from Quebec to the grid in Massachusetts. A plan put forward by the Baker administration in January depends on this form of clean energy to decarbonize the state’s electricity sector, and Boston commercial building owners need clean power to meet strict city emissions limits.

If not hydro, then what, Maine?

Scott Van Voorhis is Banker & Tradesman’s columnist; opinions expressed are his own. He may be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.