Harbor authority moved $41m through a dormant maintenance fund
Eleven months of board minutes, three FOIA responses and a leaked ledger show a repair account being used as a discretionary pot.
The maintenance fund was created in 1998 to repaint bulkheads. For most of its life it held less than two million dollars. Between January and November of last year, the ledger obtained by Eido Wire shows $41.3m routed through it in fourteen transfers, none of which appear in the authority's published capital plan.
Three of those transfers left the same day they arrived. The largest, $9.8m on 14 March, was booked as "berth readiness" and paid to a contractor incorporated eleven weeks earlier.
The authority's counsel says every transfer was lawful and that the capital plan is "a planning document, not an accounting record". Two former board members disagree on the record, and a third spoke on condition their voice be masked.
Records requested under the state's freedom-of-information statute took 214 days to arrive and came with 61 pages withheld in full. The withheld pages are the subject of an appeal filed this month.
Corrections
- correction · Aug 30, 2026, 03:02 PM
An earlier version said the fund was created in 1989. It was created in 1998.
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Sparks go to Ada Marchetti's connected payout account, not to a general pot. Records requests, transcripts and travel are what they pay for.
Ada Marchetti reads Harbor authority moved $41m through a dormant maintenance fund
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