Norfolk – The Virginia Port Authority took exception to several issues raised in Port's Secrecy Gives Off Odor, an editorial printed in the Sunday (1/15) edition in The Virginian-Pilot. Jerry A. Bridges, the VPA's executive director, felt compelled to respond and his response appeared in Friday's newspaper on page 6 of the Hampton Roads section. The Pilot edited the letter for length, but below is the response in its entirety.
I have always respected The Virginian-Pilot as a regional news source, but with the recent opinion piece: Port's Secrecy Gives Off Odor (1/15, p. 8) I want to make clear my perspective. The editorial questioned the transparency of the Virginia Port Authority's business negotiations with PCS, a company considering Portsmouth Marine Terminal (PMT) for a sulfur melting operation.
The VPA's initial discussions with PCS were kept in-house because the agency was still in the due diligence phase and discussing the proposal internally. This is our normal procedure with any such negotiation and that course of action is protected by state law.
We felt comfortable going forward to the community with the information we had gathered following a fact-finding trip by a VPA delegation to a similar PCS facility in Galveston, Texas. (The trip was paid for by the VPA). Within a week of having returned from Texas, VPA and PCS officials were speaking face-to-face with elected and civic leaders.
The idea that there has been some secret backroom deal regarding this proposed use could not be further from the truth. Negotiations that were only some three months old, a fact-finding trip to Texas, meetings with two mayors, a city council, leaders of several civic organizations and a respected local environmental group hardly constitutes an "abrogation of public trust."
We asked ourselves what is the best way to inform people in and around PMT of this proposed use and the answer was a face-to-face meeting with representatives of the people. Our goal was to inform those people and the VPA Board of Commissioners first because I believe it is unfair to have the case for or against any project made in the newspaper before the affected parties know about it. In truth, we took the issue to the elected and civic association leaders before talking to our board.
We were well aware of what unfolded with PCS in Morehead City, NC, and made the effort to just the opposite: provide the community as much advance information as possible before moving to the next phase. In Morehead City, PCS presented the community a nearly completed package.
Our situation couldn't be more different: At this point no contract has been signed, there is no letter of intent and regardless of what has transpired in the last week we are not ready to advance anything other than a body of information on to the VPA board.
If we were forced to discuss every business prospect publicly our competitors would attend our board meetings and make hay at our expense. I can say that the VPA regularly gets cloaked inquiries from our competitors seeking information about customers, contracts and prospects.
Legal exceptions protect the competitive nature of our business negotiations and contracts. It is an accurate statement that to this day the VPA has acted responsibly in managing the assets of the commonwealth and the result, as you state, is: 343,000 jobs, $41 billion in total revenues, $13.5 billion in payroll compensation and $1.2 billion in local revenues. As a result of this responsible action we are the nation's sixth largest port and poised to become the US East Coast's lead facility.
Finally, it is a misplaced argument to make that the port operates without regard to its neighbors. To the contrary, we -- the state -- recently spent millions on a public safety project that removed 14 rail crossings within the City of Portsmouth. Moreover, I have publicly stated more than once that the priorities for PMT are: 1) job creation 2) tax revenue for the city 3) diversification of the harbor and 4) revenue for the VPA.
In general, we work to be good neighbors in Portsmouth and all of the communities in which we do business and this will not change.
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