Dec 31 2008
South Carolina Ports Authority Awards $700k in Bonuses
COLUMBIA — With a bottomed-out economy and longshoremen looking for second jobs, Sen. Glenn McConnell says the State Ports Authority picked the wrong time to hand out bonuses.
The ports authority awarded $208,000 to its top managers and roughly $500,000 to the rest of its employees, and McConnell, R-Charleston and the president pro tem of the state Senate, said Tuesday he is trying to figure out a way to use legislation to change the practice in the future.
“They (SPA executives) are getting in one day what most working people in this community won’t make in six months,” McConnell said. “What kind of message does that send?”
Bernard S. Groseclose Jr., president of the ports authority, received a bonus of nearly $28,000 on top of his $264,000 salary. McConnell compared that with the average $41,000 salary for Charleston County workers in 2007.
Joe Bryant, vice president for terminal development, took in nearly $22,000. Peter Hughes, chief financial officer, and William McLean, vice president for operators, both received more than $19,000.
All the other 434 ports authority employees earned a bonus that averaged about $1,150. The money was distributed in September.
You gotta love it. The economy is in the tank all across the country. Americans at every income level are tightening their belts. More people are out of work and others are working more than one job. Meanwhile, the fat cats at the ports authority give themselves a bonus worth more money than almost half of the people in this state make in a year.
This is right on par with Congress taking it’s annual COLA this week worth over $4,000 when they have run the country into the ground. The SPA hasn’t done much better.
“Their business is down, they are in danger of losing their biggest account; that’s the record of the port at this hour,” McConnell said. “There is no increase in economic activity for the community, but they reward themselves for a profit on a state monopoly.”
McConnell said longshoremen are losing hours while volume is down here, like elsewhere. The majority of the SPA’s business is container traffic, which dropped nearly 10 percent in the last fiscal year, and for the first five months of the current fiscal year is down by upwards of 4 percent.
You and I have to live within our means, but don’t ever have the audacity to expect government and bureaucrats to do the same.
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