When the CIAA tournament got underway in Baltimore, one of the biggest boosters in attendance was Mayor Brandon Scott.
The city’s chief executive opened the college basketball tournament in late February by presenting the conference commissioner with a proclamation declaring it CIAA Tournament Week in Baltimore. As the festivities progressed, the Democratic mayor could be seen on social media hobnobbing with city and state leaders at events, attending games and posing for photos with student athletes from the conference’s 12 historically Black colleges and universities.
The mayor’s support was not just ceremonial. It was also financial. Scott’s office purchased $30,000 worth of tickets to the event, according to an invoice obtained by The Baltimore Sun.
That bought 50 tickets for each of seven sessions of men’s and women’s games spread over the Feb. 22-25 tournament. Ticket values ranged from $50 each for the first two sessions, held on the Tuesday and Wednesday of tournament week, to $150 per ticket for the final session. That session alone cost the mayor’s office $7,500.
Attendees at the final session were treated to the men’s and women’s championship games at the city-owned CFG Bank Arena downtown, as well as two concerts at Rams Head Live! and a CIAA Fan Fest at the Baltimore Convention Center.
The Baltimore Sun first asked about tickets for city officials during the week of the tournament and received the invoice Feb. 28 via a Maryland Public Information Act request.
Officials with the mayor’s office said they subsequently struck a deal with the CIAA to provide the tickets at a special “early bird” rate. A refund was issued, and the city was rebilled for $7,420, said Cirilo Manego, a spokesman for Scott. That bill was paid Monday as a supplemental item in the mayor’s office budget.
This is the second year the CIAA, the nation’s oldest historically Black athletic conference, has held its tournament in Baltimore. City leaders have been vocal about their pride in snagging the event away from Charlotte, North Carolina, which hosted the tournament for 15 years previously.
In June, CIAA and Baltimore officials announced a two-year extension to keep the tournament in Baltimore through 2025.
As Baltimore makes a play to keep the tournament even longer, the pressure has been on for city officials to show their enthusiasm. Visit Baltimore President and CEO Al Hutchinson appeared at the Baltimore City Council’s Feb. 6 meeting to encourage council members and their families to attend.
“I would just implore you, to your fan base, to your followers, send out those links, encourage people to purchase tickets,” Hutchinson said. “We need them in the stands.”
He also said Visit Baltimore, the city’s nonprofit marketing group, would give each council member a free ticket to the final games on the Saturday of tournament week.
“We want to be in lockstep with ethics, number one, of giving things away, but we also want to be able to provide you with some support to come to the tournament,” Hutchinson said.
Visit Baltimore’s offer, however, proved not to be aligned with the city’s ethics ordinance. On Feb. 21, the first day of tournament play, council members received an email from Board of Ethics Director J. Christoph Amberger, advising them that Visit Baltimore is a “controlled donor” under the city’s ordinance. City ethics law bars officials from accepting a gift worth more than $20 from such donors.
Visit Baltimore is considered a controlled donor because it is a registered lobbyist on behalf of the tournament, Amberger explained in the email, which was obtained by The Baltimore Sun.
Kelly Nagle, a spokeswoman for Visit Baltimore, said the organization ultimately did not “gift” any tournament tickets to City Council members.
“If council members attended the games, they purchased those tickets independently,” Nagle said.
Nor did the mayor’s office receive free tickets, officials with Scott’s office said. The Scott administration purchased the tickets that had been set to be provided at no cost via Visit Baltimore.
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On the same day the ethics advice was circulated, the mayor’s office was issued the $30,000 invoice from Baltimore Tourism Sports Development Council Inc. at 400 E. Pratt St., 10th floor — Visit Baltimore’s office.
“We chose 50 per session because that was the original number that was given to us by CIAA,” Manego said. “There was no rhyme or reason to it.”
Manego said the tickets were predominantly distributed to community groups. Some went to the Mayor’s Office of Children and Family Success because it deals with city youth, while others were sent to Safe Streets, a violence intervention group funded by the city. The mayor’s office supplied a breakdown of ticket distribution showing four out of five tickets to each session went to community groups or those two offices.
Officials declined to name most groups that received tickets, but said recipients included several city youth basketball teams for boys and girls. The neighborhood association for Coldstream Homestead Montebello in East Baltimore received some, as did City Springs Elementary School’s youth basketball team.
Remaining tickets were given to city staff. No tickets were provided to members of the City Council, Manego said.
Asked about the price tag for the tickets, Manego said the city was initially “taken aback” by the $30,000 bill, but was prepared to foot the cost.
“Above everything, the mayor wanted to make sure tickets are going to be distributed, and because he’s invested in CIAA and wanted to make sure they got to community members, he was more than willing to take that cost,” Manego said.