Why Should Delaware Care?
The Port of Wilmington, a state-owned facility, is one of the last anchors of high-paying, blue-collar jobs in northern Delaware. A new controversy is brewing over who will ultimately oversees the operations there though: the incoming Meyer administration or leaders picked by the short-lived Hall-Long administration.
Following his inauguration Tuesday, Gov. Matt Meyer became responsible for the future of the Port of Wilmington, but his influence over the embattled facility – and the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars committed to its expansion – is already being challenged.
Those challenges are teeing up to become the first political showdown of Delaware’s fledgling 2025 legislative session, pitting the self-proclaimed outsider governor against leading state lawmakers within his own Democratic Party.
During the previous week, two Delaware Democrats took steps that appear to limit the new governor’s ability to shape the board of the Diamond State Port Corporation, the state entity responsible for overseeing operations at the publicly owned, privately run port.
The first occurred on Jan. 15 when Senate Majority Leader Bryan Townsend sponsored a bill that would, in part, strip Meyer of the authority to name a chairperson for the Port Corporation’s board.
If lawmakers pass the bill and can override a possible veto, the powerful chairperson position – held for years by former-Secretary of State Jeffrey Bullock – will instead be decided by the Port Corporation’s own board members.
Asked last week why he sponsored the bill, Townsend said via text message that the state’s Port Corporation should be governed more like private companies that allow boards of directors to choose their own chairpersons.
He also asserted that the governor along with the Delaware Senate will “have complete say” over who serves on the Port Corporation’s board of directors.
But, for Meyer, that may not be the case.
A rival’s departing shot
On Monday, one day before Meyer’s inauguration, then-Gov. Bethany Hall-Long nominated a slate of five new members to the Port Corporation’s board. The nominees include Bullock, three prominent labor leaders – James Ascione, William Ashe and Curtis Linton – and the former chair of the Board of Pilot Commissioners, Robert Medd.
It was a surprise move that was roundly perceived as a political repudiation of Meyer, who just four months earlier had defeated Hall-Long to become the Democrats’ candidate for governor following a bitter primary election campaign.
Hall-Long was able to serve for two weeks as governor in January after former-Gov. John Carney resigned early to become mayor of Wilmington. As the state’s lieutenant governor at the time of the resignation, Hall-Long succeeded Carney.
Hall-Long, through her staff, did not respond to requests to comment for this story.
When asked about the nominations Tuesday, Meyer said he plans to withdraw the names from consideration. He subsequently sent a letter to Delaware lawmakers asserting that the names had been withdrawn.
But the question of whether he can take such a step after the Senate had already received the nominations appears to be legally unsettled. It’s a question that the top Democrat in the Senate said in a reply letter to Meyer had sparked “legal research” from his team.
Following the research, Senate President Pro Tempore David Sokola (D-Newark) said he believes that Hall-Long’s picks for the Port Corporation board are “viable nominees.”
“Whether you take issue with process, or with individual nominees on their perceived merits, we invite you to advance your own nominees for Senate consideration – a step that is well within your rights as Governor,” Sokola said in the letter.
It is not immediately clear whether Meyer will nominate new individuals for the board, seek a ruling from a court on the matter, or do nothing.
Delaware’s legal code states that board members of the Diamond State Port Corporation, who are not a part of a governor’s Cabinet, can serve three years following a gubernatorial nomination and subsequent confirmation by the State Senate.
While Hall-Long’s nominations were a surprise to outsiders, Townsend said he was aware that she was considering such a move when he introduced his bill a week earlier. He did not answer the question of whether he would vote to approve Hall-Long’s nominees.
“I introduced (Senate Bill 44) with the understanding that Governor Hall-Long was considering the nominations, but it is a separate initiative that was being discussed previously,” he said.
Bullock also appears to have known of Hall-Long’s surprise.
Earlier this month, during the Diamond State Port Corporation’s final meeting of its board members appointed by Carney, Bullock – who had already been notified that he’d be replaced as Secretary of State by Meyer – cryptically told Spotlight Delaware that his next job would be one in which he continues to interact with the media.
He did not indicate at that time what position he expected to hold.
Asked on Tuesday whether he thinks the State Senate will confirm him to sit again on the Port Corporation board, Bullock in a response linked the issue to organized labor, saying his “only interest is creating thousands of good-paying jobs” at the Port of Wilmington and its proposed expansion site in Edgemoor.
“What I want to see are Delaware tradespeople building a port at Edgemoor. And a lot more longshoremen, and others working at busy ports at Wilmington and Edgemoor,” he said in a text message.
Handing oversight to Meyer?
The recent challenges to Meyer come at a time of uncertainty for the Port of Wilmington – a center of high-paying, blue-collar jobs that suffered in recent years from financial turmoil.
Last fall, a federal judge dealt a blow to the port’s ambitious plans for growth when ruling that a permit the state needed to construct a new container terminal was invalid.
The ruling placed into limbo hundreds of millions that the federal and state governments already committed to the container terminal project, planned for the site of a former chemical plant in Edgemoor.
While Carney had doggedly pursued the project in the face of lawsuits and community opposition, Meyer has not made his intentions known regarding the long-delayed plans to build the Edgemoor terminal.
Carney’s appointees to the Diamond State Port Corporation’s board also appeared unsure about Meyer’s plans for the port during their final meeting earlier this month.
At one point during the meeting, board member Mike Begatto voiced his displeasure with a proposal to create a committee to oversee the spending of taxpayer dollars committed to the Edgemoor construction project.
How could the Carney-appointed board hand over oversight duties when they didn’t know who Meyer would appoint to sit on the next board, he questioned.
“A majority of these decisions have been made by this board, and I would think someone from this board should be the appointee,” Begatto said.
In response, Bullock assured Begatto that he (Begatto) would be nominated to serve on a new board under Meyer.
“You don’t know that,” Begatto said, skeptically – likely a reference to Meyer’s tense relationships with organized labor in the state.
Five days after the exchange, Townsend introduced his bill that would strip Meyer of the ability to nominate a chairperson to the Port Corporation board. Townsend has said that Delaware labor leaders support the bill.
What’s next for Edgemoor?
Following the Port Corporation meeting earlier this month, Bullock said in an interview with Spotlight Delaware that he was confident that “in a matter of months” Delaware could win back the federal permit, which would allow the state to dredge a channel in the Delaware River to what would become the new container terminal’s berths.
But, to do that, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which regulates dredging in navigable waters, would have to address a federal judge’s reasons for nixing the original permit.
Those reasons were outlined in Judge Mark A. Kearney sharply worded ruling last October in which he said federal regulators failed to consider the impacts on safety and on maritime congestion from a newly dredged channel to the Edgemoor terminal.
“We conclude the Corps’ largely non-existent consideration of the safety public interest factor is arbitrary and capricious,” said Kearney, whose ruling followed a legal challenge to the permit brought by competing ports along the Delaware River.
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