Written by David Wren, SC Daily Gazette.
The S.C. State Ports Authority will pay nearly $1 million in a severance package for Barbara Melvin, the maritime agency’s former president and CEO who abruptly resigned last week.
The bulk of that will be $822,780 in pre-tax salary continuation payments to Melvin through the end of this year and a $100,000 contribution to her state retirement account, according to the agreement obtained by the SC Gazette.
The authority – which owns and operates the Port of Charleston, the state’s top economic driver – will also hire Melvin as a consultant on an as-needed basis to help with the transition to new leadership through the end of this year. She will be paid $350 per hour for that work.
Melvin, who held the authority’s top job for a little more than three years, resigned unexpectedly on Aug. 21, two days after the agency’s board of directors held an unscheduled closed-door session following their regular meeting. There was no public mention of Melvin’s job during that meeting.
Melvin, in her resignation letter, did not give a reason for her departure. The authority, in a news release, said she “plans to pursue other opportunities.”
“I am grateful for the opportunity to have served South Carolina and the Ports Authority over these many years,” Melvin said in a written statement included with the news release. “However, for personal and professional reasons, I want to pursue other opportunities.”
Phil Padgett, the authority’s chief financial officer and vice president of administration, has been named interim president and CEO.
Melvin’s severance package includes several other perks.
For example, she will be allowed to keep her company iPad, laptop and cellphone after authority-related information has been wiped from them. She also will receive the balance of any accrued leave she hasn’t used.
Melvin had been with the authority for 27 years, holding various jobs including head of government relations and chief operating officer at the agency that employs about 740 people. She succeeded former CEO Jim Newsome in July 2022 after Newsome retired.
Melvin’s tenure as top boss was met with several challenges.
Last year, the authority lost a court battle in which the International Longshoreman’s Association – the dockworkers’ union – won the right to operate cranes at Charleston’s port. The case, which made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, overturned a decades-old practice in which non-union authority employees operated cranes while union workers moved cargo on the port’s terminals.
That legal challenge shut down the authority’s new Leatherman Terminal, a $1 billion investment in North Charleston, for nearly two years while the case made its way through the courts.
Melvin also announced an unpopular redevelopment plan for the authority’s roughly 70-acre Union Pier property in downtown Charleston.
The plan, which included a dense mix of retail and residential uses along Charleston Harbor, was abandoned after criticism from local environmental and preservation groups. A community-based planning process followed, but it was also abandoned when the authority agreed to sell the property to Charleston billionaire Ben Navarro. That sale has not yet closed.
Most recently, a taxpayer-funded rail project the authority says it needs to stay competitive with other ports fell behind schedule while its budget ballooned. The rail yard, where trains will load and unload cargo containers near the Leatherman Terminal, was supposed to open in July but now won’t fully open until March 2027.
State legislators, who agreed to set aside $550 million for the project, said they had been given little information about its progress. The project’s cost estimate has now climbed to $690 million.
Melvin also had several successes, overseeing operations that generate $87 billion in annual economic benefit statewide.
She oversaw the completion of a harbor deepening project that gives the Port of Charleston the deepest waterway along the East Coast, allowing the world’s biggest and heaviest container ships to visit the port at any time regardless of tides.
And she helped orchestrate the authority’s purchase of a former WestRock paper mill adjacent to the North Charleston Terminal – allowing for expansions that will eventually double the port’s cargo capacity.
“She has been instrumental in moving the ports authority in a positive direction as CEO these last three years and advancing several critical infrastructure projects, including overseeing the reopening of the Leatherman Terminal,” Bill Stern, the authority’s board chairman, said in a written statement. “We wish her the best as she embarks upon new challenges and opportunities.”
SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: [email protected].