Baltimore’s ethics board examined the mayor’s use of free tickets to sold-out events at 1st Mariner Arena and other venues, and decided that the mayor’s office needs to establish explicit guidelines for the use of these tickets — which Mayor Rawlings-Blake has previously used to get her friends and family into sold-out Jay-Z and Rihanna concerts.
Rawlings-Blake has also apparently used her access to free tickets to punish dissenting city officials, taking back Bernard C. “Jack” Young’s Ravens tickets after the city council president “criticized her support of the Baltimore Grand Prix.”
The ethics board, while ostensibly asking for tighter controls over the distribution of free tickets, went out of its way to state that “any Ethics violations that may have occurred were inadvertent rather than intentional,” according to the Sun.
By the way, on the city’s new list of legitimate reasons to distribute tickets? Providing “the Mayor and friends and family with the reasonable opportunity to attend the ticketed events in support of a given venue.” So whatever.
