Last December, The Equiery submitted an MPIA request to the Maryland Stadium Authority for documents regarding the state funds expended on the Maryland 5 Star during Mr. Hasseltine’s tenure, including “expenses; amounts paid to independent contractors, consultants, and vendors; and amounts paid to governmental, quasi-governmental, and media/marketing agencies.”

The Maryland Stadium Authority missed its statutory deadline for providing the materials to us, and once they did provide the materials, the materials they provided lacked key information about the cost to the State of the Maryland 5 Star.

We have since written back to the Maryland Stadium Authority with the following questions:

  1. The annual contracts specify that the Maryland Sports and Entertainment Corporation will provide an annual report to the Maryland Stadium Authority within 90 days of the event.  We do not see any of those reports.  Were they ever submitted and if so, could you please make them available to us?
  2. There are some invoices that we would expect to see each year but that we do not see consistently.  The most obvious one is the caterer, Select Services — shouldn’t there be a set of invoices for each year?
  3. Missing invoices:
    1. We know that not all the vendors were paid for the 2025 event – indeed, our own invoice for advertising has not yet been paid.  But we do not see our own invoice in these materials.  
    2. We also know that the veterinarians were not paid for the 2025 event. Again, we do not see those invoices in the materials.
    3. Which leads to the question — do these materials include all invoices received or only those that were paid?
    4. If it includes only those that were paid, where are all the unpaid invoices?

We do not know when, or if, MSA will respond to our questions.

We will report additional information as it becomes available.