Commissioners voted 6-1, with one abstention, to authorize as much as $3.7 million in rent rebates to ICTSI Oregon Inc., which operates the Port’s international container terminal. The Port intends the payments, in the form of rent reductions, as savings that ICTSI can pass on to shipping lines so the ocean carriers will continue sending vessels to Portland.
The program comes atop incentive payments to shipping lines of as much as $1 million approved by commissioners last month. By using rental income for the subsidies, the commission avoids spending tax revenues. But together the programs would exhaust the Port’s entire 2013 rental income from ICTSI if the public agency spends the full amount authorized.
Six of the Port commission’s nine members voted in favor of the rebate plan, one being absent from the monthly meeting. Commissioner Tom Chamberlain, president of Oregon AFL-CIO, abstained.
Commissioner Bruce Holte, president of ILWU Local 8, voted against. Holte read a statement saying commissioners should be allowed to see the financial terms of the expired Hanjin and Hapag contracts before waiving rent.
Bruce Holte, Port of Portland Commissioner and ILWU Local 8 President, said in the meeting:
“ICTSI is a failed enterprise that cannot realize the profits that it expected given the constraints of its labor obligations in the U.S. environment.Bruce Holte, Port of Portland Commissioner and ILWU Local 8 President
The Port has sunk funds in the enterprise but has received no measurable partnership from ICTSI in return. At some point it must walk away and allow capitalism to work.”
