PROVIDENCE — Attorney General Peter Neronha has opened the door to the release of long-withheld information about the $16.9 million-plus in taxpayer dollars spent in 2019 on staffing events at the Rhode Island Convention Center, the Dunkin' Donuts Center and affiliated properties. The ruling came Wednesday in response to a complaint filed by The Journal against the heavily taxpayer-subsidized Rhode Island Convention Center Authority a year ago, before COVID-19 turned the venues into a makeshift hospital and then a vaccination site. "We find that the authority itself did not violate the APRA ... by not producing records it does not maintain,'' Special Assistant Attorney General Kayla O'Rourke wrote on behalf of the office.