Free Tickets

We have a pair of tickets to give away to the Kenny Chesney concert , which is Saturday, May 25, at FedEx Field. Parking pass included. If you'd like them, please email your name and phone number to khenry@baltsun.com and be sure to put "Kenny Chesney" in the subject line.  We'll pick a winner at random on Thursday at 3:00 p.m.. Tickets must be picked up by 4:00 p.m. Friday at The Baltimore Sun's downtown office. 

Based on what we know so far, there does not appear to be anything illegal about the way Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has carried on her friendship with City Hall's top lobbyist, Lisa Harris Jones. Strictly speaking, there may not be anything unethical about it either. But it is certainly unwise. Both parties may have good motives, but the situation does damage to the public's trust in government, and it is up to the mayor to find a way to rectify it. This week, Ms. Rawlings-Blake acknowledged that she and her family spent Memorial Day weekend with Ms. Harris Jones and her family at the lobbyist's beach house.

The city's ethics board wants Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to enact stricter controls over how her office uses free tickets to events at 1st Mariner Arena and other venues. In an opinion released Wednesday, board members wrote that they believe the acceptance of tickets to 1st Mariner was permitted under a contract with the venue, but said they were "troubled" by the way the tickets have been distributed. Rawlings-Blake got dozens of tickets to distribute to sold-out concerts.

We have a pair of tickets to give away to the Kenny Chesney concert , which is Saturday, May 25, at FedEx Field. Parking pass included. If you'd like them, please email your name and phone number to khenry@baltsun.com and be sure to put "Kenny Chesney" in the subject line.  We'll pick a winner at random on Thursday at 3:00 p.m.. Tickets must be picked up by 4:00 p.m. Friday at The Baltimore Sun's downtown office. 

Tickets to a preseason hockey opener Thursday between the WashingtonCapitals and the Philadelphia Flyers at the new Piney Orchard Ice Area in Odenton will be given away to the public tomorrow morning.The 200 tickets will be given away on a first-come, first-served basisand will be limited to either two or four per person.People interested in attending the 7 p.m. game, between rookie players from both squads, can get tickets at the arena starting 9 a.m.The arena seats about 400 people. Two hundred seats are reserved for the general public and 200 are reserved for the media and state and county officials.

2:45 p.m. update: It's an annual tradition surrounding FreeFest - tickets become available, there's a mad scramble to secure tickets, many hopeful fans miss out on the freebies and then they take to social media outlets to complain. (Check out Virgin Mobile Live's "Recent Posts by Others on Virgin Mobile Live" on Facebook for a sampling of colorful commentary.) While spokeswoman Audrey Fix Schaefer would not give exact quantities of tickets that were free versus donation-based and/or Freemium tickets, she did say claims that FreeFest only offers a small percentage of free tickets are "totally incorrect.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's office turned over numerous documents Monday about her use of free 1st Mariner Arena tickets — but too late for the city's ethics board to consider them at its meeting Tuesday. Avery Aisenstark, a city employee who serves as the panel's director, said he received a large stack of documents from the mayor's office but did not have time to make copies for board members, delaying the panel's inquiry into the mayor's use of the tickets. "Once we have all the information, we will make a determination as to our next moves," said board chair Linda "Lu" Pierson.

An Anne Arundel County permitting clerk who asked for and received 100 free tickets to a festival regulated by her department has been fired, her boss announced yesterday. Janice L. Russell was issued a termination letter effective late Tuesday, said Walter Chitwood, director of the Department of Inspections and Permits. Chitwood declined to comment further. Russell, who had worked for the county for 17 years, could not be reached. Last month, Russell was reprimanded by the county ethics commission for seeking the complimentary tickets to last year's Maryland Renaissance Festival in Crownsville.

Baltimore's ethics board closed its monthly meeting Thursday without discussing publicly its probe into Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's use of free 1st Mariner Arena tickets. After discussing other matters publicly, the board voted to meet in closed session. Afterward, several board members and its director, Avery Aisenstark, a city employee, would not answer questions about what was discussed. "We're not authorized to discuss the reason for or topic of the closed meeting - let alone why something was or was not discussed," Aisenstark said in an email.

About 1,300 Baltimore high school students signed up yesterday to watch an exhibition game between the Orioles and a Cuban all-star team at Camden Yards May 3 after Orioles owner Peter G. Angelos offered tickets to schools.One hundred tickets were made available to each of the city's 20 high schools. School officials decided that members of athletic teams would be given the first chance to sign up for the tickets, then students with good attendance.Bernard Barnes, principal of Lake Clifton High School, said he quickly had a list of 100 students, including athletes, class officers and those with good attendance.

I thought Ticketmaster was the most hated company in America, but it turns out to have had some competition for that title in recent years. It lost last year to AT&T, Bank of America, Walmart and Electronic Arts, the maker of digital games. The Consumerist, a savvy blog affiliated with Consumer Reports, conducts surveys every year and declares "The Most Hated Company in America" each spring. Ticketmaster is always in the running. The financial crisis of 2007-2008 crowded the field with Bank of America, AIG and Countrywide Financial.

Ravens officials said Thursday they won't extend an open invitation to fans again without first passing out free tickets, after this week's Super Bowl celebration at M&T Bank Stadium where larger-than-expected crowds amassed and an 11-year-old boy was trampled. Tiffany Hodge said she brought her son to the stadium from East Baltimore with hopes that he could see his hero, running back Ray Rice, but an unruly crowd overwhelmed them and both were knocked unconscious. She said her son, Tyrek, suffered a concussion, an injury to his eye, and still has a swollen face.

The Baltimore ethics board came close to showing some real backbone this week in seeking higher standards for the mayor's use of free tickets she gets to the city's sports stadiums and 1st Mariner Arena . The board is demanding better record keeping and that each ticket be used for a legitimate city purpose. Unfortunately, the mayor's administration is proposing to define "legitimate city purpose" so broadly as to make the restriction meaningless, and the board appears inclined to go along with her. There is no indication that Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has used the tickets differently than her predecessors.

The city's ethics board wants Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to enact stricter controls over how her office uses free tickets to events at 1st Mariner Arena and other venues. In an opinion released Wednesday, board members wrote that they believe the acceptance of tickets to 1st Mariner was permitted under a contract with the venue, but said they were "troubled" by the way the tickets have been distributed. Rawlings-Blake got dozens of tickets to distribute to sold-out concerts.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The Orioles informed their season ticket holders Thursday by email that they will not be raising plan prices in 2013. An Orioles official confirmed the correspondence was sent, telling holders of 81-game, 29-game and 13-game plans that their prices would remain the same, marking the fifth straight season that prices won't rise. Season ticket prices range from as low as $9 to $48 a game. Individual game ticket prices haven't been announced and usually are not until January.

Baltimore's ethics board closed its monthly meeting Thursday without discussing publicly its probe into Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's use of free 1st Mariner Arena tickets. After discussing other matters publicly, the board voted to meet in closed session. Afterward, several board members and its director, Avery Aisenstark, a city employee, would not answer questions about what was discussed. "We're not authorized to discuss the reason for or topic of the closed meeting - let alone why something was or was not discussed," Aisenstark said in an email.

Here are the best things you can say about Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's use of complementary tickets to shows at 1st Mariner Arena : Every mayor has done it, and the number of tickets she and her family used make up a relatively small portion of those her office doled out. And it's not like she was stealing gift cards from poor kids. Indeed, there are plenty of worse things she could do, but plenty of better ones, too. In the grand scheme of challenges Ms. Rawlings-Blake has faced - from budget deficits to out of control pension obligations - this doesn't amount to much.

Perhaps the strangest, most dizzying scene at Saturday's Virgin Mobile FreeFest at Merriweather Post Pavilion unfolded in the Dance Forest. Some young women wore just glitter, body paint and underwear, while other concertgoers dressed as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Teenagers in T-shirts emblazened with "YOLO" (short for "you only live once") fist-pumped to deep bass rumbles. Naps were taken against trees. It was a scene of liberation that felt very 2012, when the growing popularity of electronic dance music shows no signs of fatigue.

Perhaps the strangest, most dizzying scene at Saturday's Virgin Mobile FreeFest at Merriweather Post Pavilion unfolded in the Dance Forest. Some young women wore just glitter, body paint and underwear, while other concertgoers dressed as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Teenagers in T-shirts emblazened with "YOLO" (short for "you only live once") fist-pumped to deep bass rumbles. Naps were taken against trees. It was a scene of liberation that felt very 2012, when the growing popularity of electronic dance music shows no signs of fatigue.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's law office says it can't find the current contract it has argued allows her to accept free 1st Mariner Arena tickets, but can find an older, 1988-version of the agreement with the arena that permits the behavior. "After an exhaustive search with the Comptroller's Office, the City's official archives of all Board of Estimate's [sic] records in the Legislative Reference Department, the records of the Finance Department, the records of the Law Department, and a records request to SMG, the final signed 1998 contract has not been located," Baltimore City Solicitor George Nilson wrote in a letter to ethics board director Avery Aisenstark.