AAPA raises concerns about Senate ‘sunshine’ bill

American Association of Port Authorities says it supports the intent of the port “sunshine” bill, but thinks its approach to collecting information may be misguided.    The American Association of Port Authorities is expressing support for the intentions of a port “sunshine” bill introduced in the U.S. Senate last month, but is raising concerns about the kind of information it seeks to collect and whether ports are the appropriate agencies to collect the data.
   The bill, S.1298, which was introduced by Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., seeks to provide the government with more statistical data about port performance.
   The bill is on the agenda for markup during an executive session of the Senate committee when it meets tomorrow morning.
   “While we strongly support the intention of the legislation to avoid future disruptions, AAPA believes collecting micro, inside the gate performance metrics is not the right approach. In terms of performance, the focus should be on optimizing the intermodal freight network at the macro level, including the flow of freight into and out of ports,” said Kurt Nagle, the president and CEO of the AAPA in a letter to Thune last week.
   “Port authorities, and multiple private terminals within a port, often use different performance measures and methods of calculation. The collection of these metrics is not likely to meet the bill’s intended goal of evaluating port performance.”
   Nagle added that “AAPA is also very concerned that the bill requires port authorities to collect performance metrics overall at a port. We do not believe port authorities are the appropriate reporting body. “
   “Ports are a combination of public and private facilities,” he explained. “In the case of private terminals within a port authority facility, metrics collected are usually proprietary in nature and not available to port authorities. Access to the performance data, outside the port authority’s jurisdictions, such as many bulk terminals, like oil and coal, would not be readily available to port authorities as they have no contractual relationships with these facilities.
   “Maintaining port authorities as the sole reporting entities in the bill will likely create an unwarranted and impractical collection burden on port authorities, as well as create a strong likelihood of providing incomplete data, which runs contrary to the intent of the legislation,” added Nagle.