Yesterday morning, the Port of Seattle's media wing attacked my ongoing series of posts on the Port of Seattle's successful attempt to advocate an anti-reform, anti-environmental policy at a Monday meeting of the American Association of Port Authorities' policy committee. Charla Skaggs, a Port of Seattle spokeswoman who commented on my post, argued that Seattle's port isn't the force behind the AAPA's new anti-reform policy, and the reform I've talked up in my posts isn't necessary anyway: The Port already has a Clean Trucks program to address environmental concerns. But while Skaggs wants to downplay the Port's role in the regressive policy adopted by the AAPA, her arguments were largely semantic.

Seattle Port CEO Tay Yoshitani did have a role in the AAPA's anti-reform policy decision, the firm that the Port retains to lobby the federal government wasn't solely concerned with the issues discussed in my posts, but it was still paid with taxpayer money to lobby against port reform, and the Port's alternative environmental policies are weak in the knees, to say the least.

For more on the back and forth with Skaggs, see below the jump.

1. Skaggs first objects to my presentation of the policy decision passed Monday by the AAPA as “driven” by Port of Seattle CEO Tay Yoshitani. She says, “It was not Tay [who introduced the proposal]. Back in the AAPA’s annual meeting a port in North America—and to be honest I don’t know which port it was—said that this is an issue they felt the AAPA should address.”

While it is true that the proposal was introduced by the policy committee’s chairman, Michael Leone (Port Director for the Mass. Port Authority), sources within the AAPA who asked to remain anonymous have reported that he was responding to a request made by Yoshitani. The sources note that the Yoshitani and every other port on the council voted against F4A reform, with the Port of LA voicing a lone dissent. What’s more, if you look at the other members of the policy council it seems highly unlikely that any of them would have had enough of a stake in this conflict to encourage the introduction of such a decision. Simply put, the ports of Duluth, Minnesota, Freeport, Texas, and Cape Canaveral, Florida, (the other members of the policy committee) are all quite small in comparison with Seattle, or the mammoth LA port. Those last two are the principal stakeholders in this fight. LA is adamantly for F4A reform, Yoshitani is adamantly opposed. The newly adopted policy decision announces the AAPA’s opposition to a proposed reform of the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (F4A), a reform that would give municipalities the ability to set environmental, health, and labor standards for port trucks.

2. “The F4A doesn't have a ‘loophole,’ as it has been characterized," Skaggs says. "The AAPA’s legislative policy council thinks we are already achieving [reform] without a significant expansion of federal law.”

Here, Skaggs argues with my wording, claiming that the F4A does not have a “loophole” that needs closing. This is a semantic disagreement. More substantively, she notes that the AAPA wants to leave environmental concerns to the “tools” currently available. Skaggs cites the Port of Seattle’s clean truck program as an example. The program bans pre-1994 vehicles from the Port at the beginning of 2011, affecting around 400 low-income drivers. Through Cascade Sierra Solutions, a non-profit devoted to fuel efficiency, the Port offers drivers financial assistance of up to $5,000 (or the blue book value of the truck) towards purchasing a new rig, if they scrap their old one. This relatively small amount of money will only allow them to purchase slightly less old trucks, which will still emit significant amounts of pollutants. That’s if they can even get a used truck to begin with. In most cases, $5,000 plus whatever savings they've scrapped together as a port trucker won't be enough to buy a new truck. The drivers will have to take out a loan too. As the CEO of Cascade Sierra admits in a recent Cunningham Report article (the content is blocked behind a pay wall), "That is a real problem with a lot of guys at all of the ports, they just don't have access to financing." The Port of Long Beach has a similar program, which has encountered similar complaints.

Reform of F4A would allow municipalities to institute arrangements similar to the Port of LA’s progressive clean truck program, which transferred the economic responsibility to trucking companies that deal with the port, and currently abuse drivers’ independent contractor status to get out of paying expenses.

3. Skaggs's third objection is that the Port did not hire a lobbying firm “against this issue.” True. Skaggs says, "McBee has been our federal representative for quite some time. Twelve issues they lobbied on over the course of three months." But the port did pay $60,000 (in the third quarter of 2009) to McBee Strategic, one of the top lobbying firms in Washington D.C. (They have an ongoing relationship with the Port.) The money wasn't solely for lobbying against reforming F4A, although that was one of the listed targets. By the way, the American Trucking Association (ATA) is also a McBee client, and they are one of the most intense opponents of environmental/labor friendly port reform.

All of the above goes against Skaggs's fourth objection, which is that Yoshitani isn’t opposing port reform. The Port of Seattle’s clean trucks program is inadequate. Yoshitani is standing in the way of altering F4A to allow for municipalities to regulate environmental, labor, and health standards in port trucking. That sounds like opposing reform to me. As a private lobbying entity, The ATA can oppose changing the F4A all it wants. But Mr. Yoshitani is a public servant in a city where the mayor, the city council, and several port commissioners support reforming F4A because of the benefits it would bring the drivers and the surrounding communities. Whose interests is Yoshitani representing exactly?

Skaggs has been unfailingly polite and informative in our phone conversations and email correspondence. I apologize for not being in touch with her sooner. But I suspect she will continue to be annoyed with my coverage of the Port's anti-reform agenda. I promise to stop goading the Port (about this) when it gets in line with the Seattle consensus and backs F4A reform, followed by a real Clean Trucks program, based on LA's model.