Why Should Delaware Care?
The Port of Wilmington is the owned by the taxpayers of Delaware, and contracted for operations to private companies. Questions have been raised this year over the state’s oversight of those contractors, and a new audit details failures by the state agency in its role.
Standing outside Legislative Hall on Thursday, Delaware State Auditor Lydia York braced against a chilly wind and even chillier reception from state officials after she presented findings from her office’s audit of the Port of Wilmington.
Published that morning, the audit report stated that Delaware’s port oversight board had failed during a recent four-year period to sufficiently supervise and inspect operations at the Port of Wilmington, which York described as the state’s largest public asset.
Among several specific findings, the report claimed that the board of the Diamond State Port Corporation had improperly held meetings in secret; had misled the public about the port’s true condition; did not hold sufficient oversight meetings with the port’s current and past private operators; and relied on outdated jobs projections for a planned port expansion.
During comments to reporters in front of Legislative Hall, York called the audit report the “most comprehensive, independent review” of the Diamond State Port Corporation since the state took over the Port of Wilmington 30 years ago.
The audit also followed years of acrimony at the Port of Wilmington under its previous operator — Emirati-based Gulftainer.
In 2023, the Diamond State Port Corporation ousted Gulftainer from Delaware, by voiding its 50-year operating contract and installing Massachusetts-based Enstructure in its place.
Over the next year and half, state officials and Enstructure pushed forward plans to expand the Port of Wilmington at the site of a former Edgemoor chemical plant, north of Wilmington. As part of the effort, then-Gov. John Carney announced last year that he would pull $195 million out of a little-known government fund to pay for about a third of the construction cost for what was to be a new Edgemoor container terminal.
Then, days before Gov. Matt Meyer came into office in January, state finance officials rushed through the actual transfer of that money to the Diamond State Port Corporation.
Weeks later — just as Meyer and lawmakers were jockeying over control of the Port of Wilmington — York launched her audit investigation, saying then that she found it odd that the multimillion-dollar transfer had occurred so rapidly.
The ultimate report, published Thursday, did not describe that money transfer as improper.
Still, during her comments, York said that such cash infusions to the Diamond State Port Corporation came as a result of a failure in past years to force Gulftainer to abide by the terms of its contract to run the facility. She noted that during its tenure in Delaware, the company had missed millions of dollars in required payments to the state.
Asked if the company had ever paid those dollars back, York said it had not.
In the official response to the findings, which also was published in the audit report, Diamond State Port Corporation officials indicated that there was no way to force Gulftainer to pay its delinquent bills, after the company “soured on the business opportunity at the Port.”
“DSPC’s highest priority was to manage this difficult situation in a manner that maintained operations at the Port and its customers, so as to maintain jobs,” the response stated.
Factual inaccuracies?
Also in response, public officials from various factions in Delaware pushed back against its the audits findings to varying degrees.
Delaware’s Senate Democrats. who have clashed with the Meyer administration over the governance of the port this year, issued a statement calling many of the findings “procedural and historic in nature, and no longer apply to the Board’s operations.”
“For example, the findings related to Gulftainer’s failure to make timely payments to the State and their contribution to environmental degradation of the site are precisely why they are no longer involved in management of the Port,” the Democrats stated.
Separately, Delaware Secretary of State Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez – who serves as the current chair of Diamond State Port Corporation board – said in an emailed statement that the audit report “contained significant factual inaccuracies.”
“While the DSPC appreciates the efforts and agrees that transparency is of the utmost importance, it respectfully does not agree with the findings of this report,” she said in the statement.
While much of the audit focused on the port before Patibanda-Sanchez’s tenure began in early 2025, it also claimed that her board had not held adequate oversight meetings this year with Enstructure, nor with the International Longshoremen’s Association – the unionized laborers who work to offload ships coming into the port.
Also as part of its official response to the findings, the Diamond State Port Corporation contended that its officials have met with Enstructure on a weekly basis.
It also stated that mere claims of failed oversight could place the Port of Wilmington at risk in pending litigation – a reference to several legal challenges filed against the port’s plans to expand in Edgemoor.
In a separate statement, Enstructure officials said they would have “welcomed the opportunity” to contribute to the audit, but said the auditor did not contact them.
Beyond current port officials, the Diamond State Port Corporation’s previous board chair, former State Secretary Jeffrey Bullock, also defended decisions made during his term, which ended in January.
He said his port board had to discuss certain topics in secret executive sessions in the past because of a potential for legal action against the port’s operator.
“In executive session, we had also discussed the ongoing financial difficulties of Gulftainer, and their refusal to resolve them, resulting in likely legal action with their lenders,” Bullock said.
$265 million and counting
Beyond its findings about operations, York’s audit also tallied the total amount of taxpayer dollars that have flowed through the state-owned Diamond State Port Corporation between 2021 and 2025 to support the Port of Wilmington.
Between COVID relief money, transfers from a little-known state purse, forgiven debt, and other dollars the port corporation held, the public supported the Port of Wilmington with as much as $265 million during the four-year period, according to the report.
“In 2018, past DSPC leadership promised the State of Delaware was ‘out of the port business,’” York said. “The reality is, since then, our state has almost doubled its financial commitment to the port.”
Besides the public money that has already flowed to the Port of Wilmington is another $180 million in federal grants that have been committed for the facility’s expansion in Edgemoor.
York also acknowledged during her press conference that the amount does not include another $10 million that Gulftainer had received in 2020 from the federal Paycheck Protection Program.