The Charleston Gazette
22 June 2006
By Jennifer Ginsberg, Staff writer
The West Virginia Public Port Authority now has an official leader, after being without an executive director for more than a year and a half.
Board members unanimously voted to offer the job to the agency's acting director and development coordinator Patrick Donovan.
Donovan, 40, of Hurricane, assumed the top job's duties after previous director Bill Jackson retired in December 2004. Secretary of Transportation Paul Mattox said he and Donovan still have to discuss a salary.
In July, then-board member Mike Bright said the director would earn about $65,000 a year. Bright said board members had received 42 applications from people from West Virginia, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, and narrowed the list to 10.
Members were supposed to interview the four best candidates and hire someone at the September board meeting, but did not because the agency was without a chairman.
"We felt it wouldn't be wise to select a director before we had a chairman," board member Newt Thomas said after Wednesday's meeting.
Donovan will continue working on projects that combine multiple transportation types.
The agency's marquee project involves the Heartland Corridor, a rail line that stretches from Portsmouth, Va., to Columbus, Ohio, and passes through Prichard and Kenova in Wayne County.
The project calls for trains to carry double-stacked containers along this route, which will double the corridor's shipping capacity. The trains will then travel from Columbus to Chicago.
President Bush signed a federal transportation bill in September that included $33 million for an intermodal terminal in Prichard and $90 million to expand tunnels along a Norfolk Southern rail line between Virginia and Columbus. Shipping containers will be transferred among trucks, rail cars and barges at the Prichard site.
Donovan will talk with Norfolk Southern about donating 78 acres of land at Prichard for the terminal site. The company has said it will take them three to four years to expand the tunnels, Donovan said.
Meanwhile, Wednesday's meeting was the first for several new board members because many of the existing members' terms have expired.
New board members are David Mullins, Dick Dlesk, Gerald Sites, Jim Llaneza, Paul Mattox and Fred Burns.
Existing board members are Newt Thomas, Eric Peters, Strat Fotos and Andy Kowalo.
Gov. Joe Manchin still has to appoint one more board member.