Photo by Paul Frederiksen.

Though D.C. United recently came to an agreement with the District that will keep the team at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium through the end of the 2013 season, the deal doesn’t seem to have abated Maryland’s coveting of our beloved soccer franchise.

A minuscule line item in a budget document proposed this week by Gov. Martin O’Malley for Maryland’s 2013 fiscal year calls for a supplemental appropriation “to provide funds to study the economic feasibility, economic impact, and fiscal costs of building a stadium for the DC United in Westport.”

O’Malley’s budget proposes spending $175,000 on determining whether it would make sense for the Old Line state to attempt to snatch United away by dangling a shiny new stadium in front of a team that inhabits a 51-year-old football coliseum.

We’ve known for a while that Charm City has been salivating over United. Major League Soccer has done its own research on the potential of relocating the team to Baltimore’s Westport section, where instead of vast parking lots and undeveloped tracts as it does at RFK, it would have as neighbors the Orioles’ Ballpark at Camden Yards and the Ravens’ M&T Bank Stadium.

And now, O’Malley would like the state to do some footwork of its own. But the Maryland General Assembly isn’t exactly on board with the study. In a budget analysis document issued yesterday, legislative staffers recommended deleting the economic feasibility study and using the $175,000 for something else.

We see what you did there, Carcetti.