There is nothing at all wrong with having some skin in the game.

The expression has been attributed to Warren Buffett since in Buffett’s first fund he raised $105,000 from 11 doctors, himself placing a token sum of $100 as his “skin in the game.”

Wednesday, Columbus Mayor Keith Gaskin hosted a meeting between city officials and local state legislators, hoping to convince them to support efforts to secure $4 million to complete the Sen. Terry Brown Amphitheater, a project that has languished, particularly over the past two years.

To date, the project has cost $3.7 million, nearly all of it from state funding.

When first proposed in 2015, the price tag was $5.2 million. Seven years later, the total projected cost is $7.7 million.

The legislative delegation who met with the city officials (Pierre Beard was the one councilman who attended) Wednesday — Rep. Kabir Karriem, Rep. Andy Boyd and Sen. Angela Turner Ford — did not appear hostile to the city’s request for state funding, but neither were they entirely on board.

Karriem, a former city councilman, suggested the city needed skin in the game. He pointed to Brandon, which built its amphitheater with a combination of public and private funds, much of it local. The Brandon Amphitheater has more than a dozen corporate sponsors, as the signage at the venue clearly indicates.

To date, Columbus has not secured corporate sponsors and has no funds set aside to contribute to the costs. Funds from the 2-percent restaurant tax are committed entirely to improvements at Propst Park.

The only effort by the city to bear some of the cost for the amphitheater came in 2019, when the council asked then-Rep. Jeff Smith, who was the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, to sponsor a bill allowing the city to add another 1 percent to the restaurant tax. The bill never got out of committee.

What’s left is an incomplete facility that serves no purpose other than to exist as a pinata for those who always seem to take a perverse pleasure in anything that embarrasses the town.

From the start, it had its detractors. It was costly, prone to flooding and doomed to failure, critics said. Of course, those were the same arguments made in opposition to the Riverwalk and the Soccer Complex.

Despite occasional flooding at the Riverwalk and Soccer Complex, both of those projects can only be considered a success. The same is possible for the amphitheater.

The one thing everyone should be able to agree on is that the project is too far along to abandon. That’s simply not an option.

We believe the project can be successful if the river is accounted for in the planning, if the work is done correctly and if the facility is managed and promoted by professionals. There is value in this type of facility.

The state is sitting on a $3.9 billion surplus, $1.6 billion of which is earmarked for capital projects such as parks and entertainment venues. It could easily write a check for $4 million.

We should remember, though, that the state just wrote a check for $250 million for an aluminum mill to be located in Lowndes County. The idea that we have gotten more than our fair share certainly exists in Jackson.

With that as the backdrop, we agree with Rep. Karriem. We need to develop ideas to put some skin in the game when it comes to the amphitheater.

The river is a largely untapped asset in this community, and continuing to build on the successes of the Riverwalk, the Soccer Complex, Riverside Park, the pedestrian bridge and other projects will be good for the city in the long run.

The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.