Delaware officials say little about new taxpayer money for the port

Note: Delaware’s finance secretary sent an email with a response to my inquiry after this story had published. The story has been updated.

Delaware officials are saying little about a fresh round of government funding for the Port of Wilmington that lawmakers quietly passed two weeks ago, just as a new operator was preparing to take over the publicly owned and privately run port facility.

Among several lingering questions is why state officials chose Delaware’s little known office of unclaimed property to send an undisclosed number of dollars to the port.

The opacity follows years of failures by state officials to alert the public about developments that led to a disastrous tenure in Delaware of the port’s previous operator, GT USA Wilmington — a subsidiary of Gulftainer, an Emirati logistics company.

GT USA’s 5-year tenure featured millions of dollars in missed lease payments to the state, the gradual deterioration of container cranes and other equipment, and the port operator’s failure for much of its time to turn a profit, leading to late payments for contractors and even port workers.

Two months ago, port officials said they would not accept GT USA’s bid to remain as the operator of the Delaware port, instead choosing as a replacement a Massachusetts company, called Enstructure, LLC.

Six weeks later, lawmakers approved Delaware’s omnibus capital spending legislation, commonly called the bond bill.

Slipped into the bill was language directing the Delaware Office of Unclaimed Property to send an undisclosed amount of money to the development of a “maritime terminal” – as well as to a program that gives cash to state contractors.

A source within the legislature confirmed that the maritime terminal refers to the Port of Wilmington – including its existing facility along the Christina River, and to a planned container terminal at the site of a former DuPont chemical factory in Edgemoor.

After this story published on Thursday, Delaware Finance Secretary Rick Geisenberger sent an email confirming that the new money is for the port.

He also said that the amount of money to be appropriated is uncertain.

Still, previous remarks from Secretary of State Jeffrey Bullock indicate it could reach $50 million. 

During a private meeting of state port officials in April, Bullock said the Delaware public would have to invest at least another $100 million to ensure the success of the Port of Wilmington, and in particular its expansion at Edgemoor.

Bullock at the time said Gov. John Carney had already approved $50 million from a federal pandemic recovery fund.

The remaining $50 million would “probably come from a combination of federal and state funds,” Bullock said, according to the minutes of an executive session meeting of the Diamond State Port Corporation — the state-owned entity that oversees the port.

I first reported on that meeting in a story published in May.

Whatever the amount, the final distribution of new money from the bond bill must be approved by four Delaware officials – the state’s finance secretary; its budget director; and the two lawmakers who sponsored the bond bill, Sen. Jack Walsh, D-Stanton, and Rep. Debra Heffernan, D-Bellefonte. 

Those approvals are not done in a public setting, and none of those four Delaware officials responded to requests to comment. 

Neither did Bullock, who oversees the port’s management, nor a spokesman for Carney.

From unused gift cards to port cranes

The newly approved money will come from the Delaware office tasked with seizing assets that state officials believe have gone unclaimed by their rightful owners.

They can include uncashed checks, unused gift cards, and even an unclaimed stock dividend.

After holding the items for a set term, the state can absorb their value into government accounts through a process, called escheatment. 

Because Delaware is a choice destination for business formations, its unclaimed property office provides an outsize revenue stream for the state.

During the previous fiscal year, it added an estimated $404 million to Delaware’s budget.

Though Delaware officials have stayed quiet about the new money from unclaimed property, they did announce in a press release Wednesday that their deal with Enstructure was finalized.

The Massachusetts company — which already had a Delaware presence through its subsidiary Port Contractors — will begin managing the Port of Wilmington “in a matter of days,” according to the statement.

The press release also said that Enstructure officials estimate they will invest as much as $65 million into the port during the next five years, “depending on growth.”

Last spring, the company said in its bid to take over the port that it would invest $87 million during its first ten years at the port, according to the minutes from the private port meeting in April.

Delaware port officials never made Enstructure’s bid public, even in a redacted form. The names of companies seeking to take over the facility last spring were also kept secret until May when Bullock announced that Enstructure was the state’s choice as the port’s new operator.

In Wednesday’s press statement announcing the deal’s finalization, state officials did not mention their recently approved public dollars from the bond bill.

Also left unsaid was where the remaining money needed for the half-billion dollar construction of the Edgemoor terminal would come from.

Contact Karl Baker at kbaker6@protonmail.com or on Signal at 206-595-0057.