​​​​​​ Everyone In The Fight Paid The Man Who Would Decide It

I. Four Hundredths Of A Degree

The parking lot was empty.

Monday, February 16, 2026. Presidents Day. At the Port of Wilmington, the gate was open, and nothing came through it. No trucks idling in a line down Christina Avenue. No cranes swinging. The cold storage buildings, 800,000 square feet of them, sat dark and running on nothing but their own compressors.

Forty-five men stayed home that morning who had not stayed home on that day in thirty years.

They belong to Local 1694 of the International Longshoremen’s Association, and what they do for a living is more delicate than almost anyone in Delaware understands. A banana is picked green in Guatemala or Ecuador, and it is still alive when it goes into the hold. It is still breathing. It is still ripening, slowly, on a clock that nobody can stop. The entire commercial value of that fruit depends on holding it at 13.3 degrees Celsius, and holding it there within four hundredths of a degree, from the moment it leaves the tree until the moment it reaches a grocery shelf in Philadelphia or Baltimore or Cleveland.

Four hundredths of a degree. Warmer than that and it ripens in the hold and arrives as a truckload of black mush. Colder and it takes chill injury, turns gray, and never ripens at all.

The men in that parking lot are the ones who hold it there. They open the hatch, they read the pulp temperatures, they move the fruit into the reefer sheds, and they do it fast enough that the cold chain never breaks. Wilmington became the number one American gateway for Chilean winter fruit because of them. Not because of the river. Not because of the cranes. Because of a few dozen men who know exactly how long a pallet can stand on a dock in February.

“A banana leaves the tropics still alive and still ripening. Forty-five men in

Wilmington held it inside four hundredths of a degree for thirty years.

On February 16, 2026, they stayed home, and the fruit went to Chester.”

Bill Ashe has worked that waterfront for forty-nine years.

He is an International Vice President of the ILA, and he has outlasted nine governors of Delaware. He was there when the fruit companies came, and he was there through every crisis before this one, and he has spent his adult life on a dock where the difference between a good year and a ruined one is measured in fractions of a degree.

On the Sunday before Presidents Day, Bill Ashe knew the ships were not coming.

Nobody from the State of Delaware called him. Nobody from the Diamond State Port Corporation called him. Nobody from Enstructure, the private company that has operated the Port of Wilmington since 2023, called him. He found out the way the rest of the waterfront found out, which is by watching the schedule and seeing four vessels routed somewhere else.

Eleven miles up the river in Chester, Pennsylvania, a Chiquita ship was working that Monday. The bananas came off. The reefer trucks pulled out. The men doing that work do not belong to Local 1694.

“Bill Ashe has worked that waterfront for forty-nine years and outlasted nine governors. Nobody from the State of Delaware called to tell him the ships were not coming.

He found out by reading a schedule.”

Understand who these men are, because Delaware has spent two decades talking about jobs and this is what one actually looks like.

Nearly every man on that gang is Black. For a great many of them, the waterfront produced the first six-figure income anyone in their family had ever earned. Not a signing bonus. Not a stock grant. A wage, paid by the hour, for skilled work with a union card attached to it, in a state where the alternative on offer has been a warehouse floor at fifteen dollars an hour with a badge that beeps when you slow down.

These are the jobs Delaware says it wants. Every governor says it. Every economic development office says it. Real jobs that pay real money, is the phrase, and it has been said out loud in this state for twenty years while the actual holders of those jobs sat in a parking lot on a holiday with nothing to do.

Think about what it took to lose them. Nobody fired these men. Nobody closed the port. Nobody held a vote. Four ships simply went somewhere else, and the somewhere else was a river berth eleven miles north that a loaded vessel can actually reach.

That is the seven feet.

The federal government spent thirty years and $400 million dredging the main channel of the Delaware River to forty-five feet. The Port of Wilmington is not on that channel. Its berths sit around the corner on the Christina River at thirty-five to thirty-eight feet. A fully loaded ship can come all the way up the Delaware, clear the federal channel with room to spare, and still not be able to reach a Wilmington dock.

So it goes to Chester. Or it goes to Philadelphia. And every time it does, the fruit that Local 1694 has handled for thirty years is handled by somebody else, and the men in Wilmington find out about it from a schedule.

“The federal government spent $400 million dredging the river to forty-five feet. Wilmington’s berths sit at thirty-five. Nobody closed the port. Four ships went

eleven miles north to a dock they could actually reach.”

Now here is the fact that should end this section, and it is the one nobody in Delaware has printed.

The forty-five men of Local 1694 are represented in Dover by a registered lobbyist named Patrick Allen, of Allen Strategies, at 4250 Lancaster Pike. He signed them on April 15, 2025.

Patrick Allen also represents Enstructure. He signed that account on June 1, 2023.

Before either of them, he represented GT USA, the first company Delaware handed a fifty-year lease of the Port of Wilmington. He signed that one on February 15, 2018.

Read that sequence again. The same man has carried three straight parties on that waterfront: the concessionaire Delaware gave the port to in 2018, the concessionaire it gave the port to in 2023, and the union those concessionaires employ. When the men of Local 1694 sat in an empty parking lot on Presidents Day, the person paid to speak for them in the capital of this state was also being paid by the company that had not sent them any work.

None of this is hidden. The Delaware Public Integrity Commission publishes every one of those registrations in a file anyone can download in ten seconds.

“The company that runs the Port of Wilmington and the union it sent home are represented in Dover by the same man. Patrick Allen took Enstructure on June 1, 2023. He took Local 1694 on April 15, 2025. Both registrations are public.”

Twenty months before that empty parking lot, a federal judge in Philadelphia had thrown out the permits for the terminal that would have fixed the seven feet. Two days after that ruling, the man whose companies brought the case wrote a check to Delaware’s next governor. Over the following week, so did nearly everyone else with a stake in the outcome.

Not one of those checks was written by a longshoreman.

Bill Ashe did not give $1,200 to Matt Meyer. Neither did the forty-four other men who stayed home on February 16. They had no lobbyist of their own that day, because the lobbyist they had was working the other side of the same dock.

That is not a labor dispute. That is a state where the only people at the table are the ones who paid to be there.

II. Monday, October 28, 2024

The courtroom is on the sixth floor of the James A. Byrne United States Courthouse at Sixth and Market in Philadelphia, and the man behind the bench that Monday was Judge Mark A. Kearney.

What sat in front of him was a permit. Not a policy, not a plan, not a press release. A permit, issued by the Philadelphia District of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, authorizing the State of Delaware to dredge a berth and build a container terminal on the old DuPont titanium dioxide ground at Edgemoor. Everything Delaware wanted on that waterfront ran through that single piece of paper.

Greenwich Terminals and its affiliates had sued to take it away. Those companies are controlled by the Holt family of Gloucester City, New Jersey, and they run the terminals thirty miles upriver that stood to lose cargo the day Edgemoor opened. Their argument was not that the terminal was a bad idea. Their argument was that the federal government had not done its homework.

Kearney agreed with them on nearly every count.

Start with navigation, because a container terminal is a navigation project and nothing else. The Corps was required to weigh what a new berth would do to vessel traffic on a river where ships already pass one another in a channel measured in feet. Kearney found the Corps gave that question superficial consideration. That is the phrase in the opinion. Superficial.

Then the traffic numbers. The Diamond State Port Corporation, which is the State of Delaware operating under a corporate name, submitted projections of how many trucks and ships Edgemoor would generate. The Corps put those numbers in the record. It did not check them. It made no attempt to verify a single figure the applicant handed it, and the applicant was the party that wanted the permit.

Then safety. Somewhere in that file there is a line where safety was supposed to be evaluated, and somebody wrote not applicable, and the analysis ended there. On a project that would put post-Panamax vessels into a working river alongside a refinery, a nuclear plant, and a federal channel, the word in the box was not applicable.

And then the piece that would matter most eight months later. Federal rules entitled the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority to issue a Statement of No Objection, or to refuse one. The Corps never obtained it. It approved the permit without ever asking the neighboring port authority whether it objected, and the neighboring port authority most certainly did.

Kearney vacated the permit. Delaware’s terminal stopped where it stood.

“The Corps gave navigation superficial consideration. It took the applicant’s

traffic numbers without checking one of them. It marked safety not applicable.

It never asked the neighboring port authority whether it objected.

A federal judge read that file and threw the permit out.”

Now understand what a vacated permit actually is, because Delaware spent the next twenty months acting as though it understood and the public was never told.

Vacating a permit does not cancel a project. It does not condemn the site, refund the money, or forbid the State from trying again. It sends the paperwork back to the agency that botched it and orders the agency to do the work properly. The bulldozers stop. The lawyers keep going. And the project sits on a shelf until somebody decides how hard to push.

Deciding how hard to push is not a job for a federal judge. It is a job for a governor.

That is the moment this entire report turns on. At nine in the morning on October 28, 2024, the future of a $669 million project belonged to a courtroom in Philadelphia, where a lobbyist is worth nothing and a campaign contribution is worth less than nothing.

By the end of that afternoon, it belonged to whoever was about to run the State of Delaware.

“Vacating a permit does not kill a project. It hands the project back.

On the morning of October 28, 2024, Edgemoor belonged to a federal judge.

By that evening it belonged to whoever was about to be Governor of Delaware.”

Leo Holt understood it immediately.

He is the president of Holt Logistics Corporation, and he had just beaten the federal government and the State of Delaware in the same opinion. He was pleased, and he said so publicly. Then, in the same breath, he mentioned that Delaware would have a new governor after the following month’s election.

That is not a remark about a lawsuit. That is a man reading a calendar.

Two days later, on Wednesday, October 30, 2024, Leo Holt gave $1,200 to Matthew Meyer, candidate for Governor of Delaware.

Eight days after that, Matt Meyer was elected.

And the State of Delaware, which had just lost, said almost nothing.

There was no public accounting of what the Corps had failed to do on Delaware’s behalf. No demand that the federal agency explain how safety came to be marked not applicable on a project the State had staked its waterfront on. No hearing, no review, no examination of how the Diamond State Port Corporation’s own unverified traffic numbers ended up as the evidentiary foundation of a permit that a judge would call arbitrary and capricious.

The State lost a $669 million project on a Monday and did not convene a single public meeting about why.

“Delaware lost a $669 million project because a federal agency did not do its work.

The State never held a hearing on how it happened. It never asked the Corps to explain. It went quiet, and eighteen months later the permit came back.”

Because it did come back. In April 2026, the United States Army Corps of Engineers reissued the permit for Edgemoor.

The ruling did not stop the terminal. It cost eighteen months. On June 23, 2026, Enstructure began final demolition on the site. Starting July 1, it staged dredgers to cut the quayside to forty-five feet. The Delaware Container Terminal is now a $669 million project of 137 acres, two berths and seven ship-to-shore cranes, built to move 1.2 million containers a year, with the first berth due to open in 2029.

The Diamond State Port Corporation and federal grants are covering about two-thirds of the cost. Roughly $446 million of public money.

So the men who wrote checks in the last week of October 2024 were not buying a verdict. The verdict was already in, and they had won it. They were buying position in the government that would decide whether a $669 million project came back to life, how fast, and with whose money.

It came back to life. It came back fast. And the money was ours.

“Leo Holt won the case and paid the Governor anyway. Read that sentence twice.

He was not buying the ruling. He already had the ruling.

He was buying what came after it.”

III. The Checks

Everything that follows comes from one place: the financial reports the committees themselves filed with the Campaign Finance Section of the Office of the State Election Commissioner. Delaware’s own form. Delaware’s own database. Account number 01005311. Full organization name: Meyer for Delaware. Office sought: State Office, Governor.

Seven checks. Thirty-six days. Here they are in the order they were written.

September 26, 2024. The lawyers go first.

Stradley Ronon Stevens and Young is a Philadelphia law firm at 2005 Market Street with an office in Wilmington. It is counsel to the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority, the agency that runs the Philadelphia docks and competes with Wilmington for the same ships. On September 26, 2024, the firm gave $1,200 to Matt Meyer.

That is thirty-two days before Judge Kearney ruled. Nobody knew how the case would come out. The money went in anyway.

And Stradley Ronon is not a bystander in this fight. One of the grounds Kearney used to throw out the Edgemoor permit was that the Corps had never obtained a Statement of No Objection from the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority. That authority’s lawyers wrote the first check in this sequence.

There is more. Stradley Ronon’s chairman emeritus is William R. Sasso, who ran the firm for twenty-seven years. The Philadelphia Inquirer describes him as a longtime attorney for the Holts. He chaired Governor Josh Shapiro’s transition. And Governor Tom Corbett appointed him a commissioner of the Delaware River Port Authority, the public agency that holds Holt’s lease, a seat he kept until 2015.

Delaware’s own Attorney General put the rest on the record. Opinion 24-IB04, issued January 29, 2024, notes the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control’s statement that Holt owned two of the appellants and that Holt’s counsel represented the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority.

The first check did not come from a neutral party. It came from the firm standing on both sides of the case.

“The lawyers for the port authority whose missing signature killed the permit wrote the first check, thirty-two days before the ruling. Their chairman emeritus is the

Holts’ longtime attorney and sat as a commissioner of the authority

that leases to Holt until 2015.”

October 7, 2024. The lobbyist pays while the case is open.

Darrell J. Baker practices law at 1601 Concord Pike, Suite 100, in Wilmington. He is also a registered Delaware lobbyist, and the State publishes his client list.

He is the registered Delaware lobbyist for Holt Logistics Corporation of Gloucester City, New Jersey, the company whose affiliates brought the lawsuit. He is at the same time the registered lobbyist for Summit North Marina LLC on the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, and for three other companies at that marina. Section IV lays out all ten of his clients, including the six that gave nothing.

On October 7, 2024, Darrell J. Baker Esquire, PA, gave $1,200. Kearney would not rule for another twenty-one days. The case was pending. The money went in anyway.

October 28, 2024. Kearney rules.

The permit is vacated. Greenwich Terminals and Gloucester Terminals, the Holt family companies that brought the case, win.

October 29, 2024. Tuesday.

Summit Point LLC gives $1,000. It files from Post Office Box 422 in Rockland, Delaware, a village of about two hundred people on the Brandywine. Summit Point is one of Darrell Baker’s registered clients. So are two other companies that use that same post office box.

October 30, 2024. Wednesday.

Leo Holt gives $1,200 from 101 South King Street in Gloucester City, New Jersey. He is the president of Holt Logistics Corporation. His family’s companies had won the case two days earlier.

Watch what he did not do. Holt Logistics Corporation, the company Darrell Baker is registered to lobby for, the company that had just beaten the State of Delaware in federal court, gave nothing at all. The check came from the man. He signed his own name to it.

Somebody made that choice. A corporation writing into a governor’s account forty-eight hours after suing his state is a headline. A man writing his own check is a line in a database.

“Leo Holt beat the State of Delaware on Monday and paid Delaware’s next Governor

on Wednesday. Holt Logistics Corporation, the company that won, gave nothing.

Leo Holt signed his own name.”

October 31, 2024. Thursday.

Three more of Darrell Baker’s registered clients give $600 each. All three file from 3000 Summit Harbour Place in Bear, Delaware, which is the address of Summit North Marina.

Summit North Marina LLC. Chesapeake and Delaware Dredging LLC. Pristine Yacht Services.

Read that middle name again. A dredging company, registered at a marina, whose lobbyist also represents the Philadelphia terminal operator that had spent four years in federal court stopping Delaware from dredging.

What it adds up to.

The six checks tied to Darrell Baker and Leo Holt come to $5,200. Add Stradley Ronon’s $1,200 on September 26 and the running total across those thirty-six days is $6,400.

The other side of the same lawsuit brought it to $12,400. That is Section V.

“Judge Kearney ruled on a Monday. Summit Point paid Tuesday.

Leo Holt paid Wednesday. Summit North Marina, Chesapeake and

Delaware Dredging and Pristine Yacht Services paid Thursday.

Every one of them is a client of the same Wilmington lawyer.”

Say the size out loud.

$6,400 is not a large amount of money, and this section is not built on the amount. Every one of these checks was legal. Every one was disclosed. Every one was at or under the limit that applies to it. Delaware caps a contribution to a statewide candidate at $1,200 under 15 Del. C. section 8010, and Leo Holt gave exactly $1,200.

Notice where the money did not go. Not one dollar of it went to a political action committee, which is where the seven-figure money in Delaware actually lives and where an independent expenditure draws no contribution limit at all. It went into Matt Meyer’s own candidate account, in checks of $600 to $1,200, under real names at real addresses, in the one place in Delaware law with the tightest limits and the sharpest disclosure.

Darrell Baker, Leo Holt, and Stradley Ronon Stevens and Young filed these where anyone could find them. They wanted them found. A contribution nobody can see does not introduce you to anybody.

“Not one dollar went to a political action committee, where the money in Delaware

has no limit at all. It went into the candidate’s own account, under real names

at real addresses, in the one place with the sharpest disclosure Delaware has.

They wanted these found.”

How this was searched.

Ninety-two filed campaign finance reports were reviewed, covering fifty-two distinct reporting periods across five committees tied to Matt Meyer. Meyer for New Castle County, account 01003643, February 7, 2016 through December 31, 2021. Meyer for Delaware, account 01005311, August 9, 2021 through December 31, 2025. Change Can’t Wait PAC, account 02005278, June 17, 2021 through December 31, 2025. Citizens for a New Delaware Way, account 02006097, May 24, 2024 through December 31, 2025. And its Third-Party Advertiser, account 04006103, May 31 through August 30, 2024. The filings outnumber the periods because forty of them are amendments that supersede an earlier filing for the same account and the same dates.

Coverage of the 2024 general election is continuous. The report covering September 4 through October 7, 2024 holds the Stradley Ronon and Baker contributions. The eight-day pre-general report covers October 8 through October 28 and carries 471 line items. The year-end report covers October 29 through December 31, was filed January 23, 2025, carries 286 line items, and holds the Summit Point, Leo Holt, and Summit North Marina contributions. The election was November 5, 2024. There is no gap.

Every name and every street address in Chart A was run separately against all five committees, across every reporting period on file. All seven contributions appear in Meyer for Delaware. None appears anywhere else, at any time.

One question is left standing.

A marina on the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. A dredging company. A yacht service. A post office box in a village of two hundred people. And the president of a terminal operator forty miles down the river in New Jersey.

Those five do not belong on the same page. They belong on the same page because one man in Wilmington is registered by the State of Delaware to represent all of them.

That is the next section.

Chart A: contributions to Meyer for Delaware, account 01005311, October 2024, showing $1,200 from Leo Holt on October 30 and $2,800 from 4 companies registered at Summit North Marina on October 29 and 31

The Baker contribution appears in the report covering September 4 through October 7, 2024. The other five appear in the year-end report covering October 29 through December 31, 2024, filed January 23, 2025.

IV. Who Darrell J. Baker Represents

Now, the disclosure that makes those addresses mean something, and it comes from a State file anyone can download in fifteen seconds. The Delaware Public Integrity Reporting System publishes a machine-readable record of every lobbyist authorization in the state. Darrell J. Baker of 1601 Concord Pike, Suite 100, appears in it ten times.

Chart B: the 10 registered Delaware lobbying clients of Darrell J. Baker, Public Integrity Reporting System employer authorization file, all carrying an end date of Indefinite

Source: State of Delaware, Public Integrity Reporting System, employer authorization file. All ten authorizations carry an end date of Indefinite. Four of the five October contributors are on that list. The fifth is the lobbyist’s own law practice.

What The Businesses Are

Summit North Marina LLC operates the marina at 3000 Summit Harbour Place on the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. About three hundred slips, a fuel dock, boat sales and brokerage, a restaurant called Grain H2O, and a Coast Guard hurricane hole designation. Delaware State Parks lists the facility on its own website and states that it is managed and operated by Summit North Marina, LLC. The ground underneath it is Lums Pond State Park. It belongs to the people of Delaware.

Chesapeake and Delaware Dredging LLC and Summit North Dredging LLC are two separate dredging companies, both registered to the marina’s address, both authorized four days apart in October 2021. Pristine Yacht Services LLC is a yacht services company at the same marina address. Summit Point LLC, Kingfish Insurance Services LLC, and State Line Casino LLC share a single post office box, number 422, in Rockland, Delaware, a village of roughly two hundred people on the Brandywine. Brandywine Gaming and Entertainment LLC is registered on Lovering Avenue in Wilmington.

And Murphy Marine Services Inc. is a cargo handling and stevedoring business that has worked the Port of Wilmington for decades, historically in the fresh fruit trade that made Wilmington the leading North American port for bananas and juice concentrate. Baker has been its registered lobbyist since October 2008. Hold that name. It comes back.

Two dredging companies, a marina and a yacht service, at one address on the canal, all registered inside four days in October 2021. Thirteen months later, the same lobbyist took on the Philadelphia operator that would spend the next four years in federal court trying to stop a dredging project forty miles downriver.

Who is Darrell J. Baker

Darrell J. Baker is a Wilmington attorney. He practices at 1601 Concord Pike, Suite 100, and he is a partner in the firm of Aber, Goldlust, Baker and Over. He is also a registered Delaware lobbyist, which means the State of Delaware requires him to file the name of every employer who pays him to influence government, and then publishes that list where anybody can read it.

There are ten names on it.

Every one of those registrations lists the same office at 1601 Concord Pike. Every one carries an end date of Indefinite. And every one of them was run, by name and by street address, against all five political committees tied to Matt Meyer, across every reporting period on file.

Here is what came back.

Chart B. Darrell J. Baker’s registered clients, Delaware Public Integrity Commission, and what each one gave to Meyer for Delaware.

Four gave. Six gave nothing, ever, to any Meyer committee, at any time.

That second number belongs in this report as plainly as the first. Nobody marched a client roster to a checkbook. Murphy Marine gave nothing in sixteen years. State Line Casino gave nothing in thirteen. Brandywine Gaming, Kingfish Insurance and Summit North Dredging gave nothing at all. And Holt Logistics Corporation, the company that sued the State of Delaware and won, gave nothing.

What paid was one cluster, in one month, into one account.

“Six of Darrell Baker’s ten clients never gave a dollar to Matt Meyer.

Murphy Marine gave nothing in sixteen years. Holt Logistics gave nothing at all.

Four clients paid, in three days, into one account.”

Ten clients. Five addresses.

Now stop looking at the names and look at the second column.

Four of the ten register at 3000 Summit Harbour Place in Bear, Delaware. That address is Summit North Marina, on the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. Summit North Marina LLC is there. So is Chesapeake and Delaware Dredging LLC. So is Pristine Yacht Services. So is Summit North Dredging LLC.

Three more register at Post Office Box 422 in Rockland, Delaware. Rockland is a village on the Brandywine with roughly 200 residents. Summit Point LLC files from that box. So does Kingfish Insurance Services. So does State Line Casino.

The last three are scattered. Holt Logistics at 101 South King Street in Gloucester City, New Jersey. Brandywine Gaming at 1100 Lovering Avenue in Wilmington. Murphy Marine at 11 Gist Road, inside the Port of Wilmington itself.

Ten clients. Five addresses. Seven of the ten sitting in two clusters. And every single client who wrote a check came out of one of those two clusters.

“Ten clients, five addresses. Four at a marina on the canal.

Three at a post office box in a village of 200 people.

Every client who paid came from one of those two.”

The order they were signed in.

The dates in the third column are not decoration. Read them from the bottom up, and a sequence appears that nobody in Delaware has printed.

On October 1, 2021, Darrell Baker registered Summit North Marina LLC.

Three days later, on October 4, 2021, he registered four more companies on a single day: Chesapeake and Delaware Dredging LLC, Summit North Dredging LLC, Pristine Yacht Services and Summit Point LLC. Three of the four sit at the marina. The fourth sits in the Rockland post office box.

Thirteen months after that, on November 1, 2022, he registered Holt Logistics Corporation of Gloucester City, New Jersey.

And on November 3, 2023, one year and two days after Holt Logistics went onto that list, Greenwich Terminals filed suit against the United States Army Corps of Engineers to stop Delaware from dredging at Edgemoor. Greenwich Terminals is a Holt company.

Nobody hires a Delaware lobbyist a year before they need one by accident.

“October 2021: Darrell Baker registers a marina and four companies around it. November 2022: he registers Holt Logistics. November 2023: Holt sues to stop Delaware from dredging. The lobbyist came first, by thirteen months.”

Sixteen years at 11 Gist Road.

The oldest name on that list is the one worth the longest look.

Darrell Baker has represented Murphy Marine Services Inc. since October 20, 2008. That is sixteen years before any of this, and Murphy Marine is not out on a canal somewhere. It sits inside the Port of Wilmington, at 11 Gist Road, and its business address is 701 Christiana Avenue.

On January 10, 2025, by Resolution 25-03, the Diamond State Port Corporation paid $2,850,000 for 1.91 acres at 701 Christiana Avenue and added that ground to the leasehold of Enstructure, the private company that operates the port.

Murphy Marine gave nothing to Matt Meyer. Not one dollar, in sixteen years. It did not have to.

“Darrell Baker has represented Murphy Marine Services since October 20, 2008. On January 10, 2025, the State of Delaware paid $2,850,000 for 1.91 acres at Murphy Marine’s business address and handed the ground to the port’s private operator.”

The name on the paperwork.

Delaware requires a limited liability company to disclose exactly one human being to the public. Not its owners. Not its officers. Not the people who take the profits. One name, the registered agent, and that is the whole of what a citizen gets.

For Summit North Marina LLC, that human being is Darrell J. Baker. For Chesapeake and Delaware Dredging LLC, that human being is Darrell J. Baker.

And in an affidavit sworn in federal court in 2007, in a case captioned Picchi v. Summit North Marina, Baker stated that he was the marina’s managing agent.

So he is the lobbyist. He is the registered agent. He was the managing agent. And he is the lawyer. On a Delaware marina, the entire visible surface of these companies is one man at 1601 Concord Pike.

Two checks that are not client money.

Six contributions came out of this circle in October 2024, and only four of them came from clients on that list. The other two are the ones that matter most.

Darrell J. Baker Esquire PA gave $1,200 on October 7, 2024. That is the lobbyist’s own law firm, not a client. He paid out of his own shop, three weeks before the ruling, while the case was open.

Leo Holt gave $1,200 on October 30, 2024. That is a man, not a client. Holt Logistics Corporation is the registered client, and Holt Logistics Corporation gave nothing.

The corporation stayed off the list. The principal signed his own name.

And Holt has a second lobbyist.

One more registration closes this section.

Edward J. Hazzouri, of Hazzouri and Associates at 115 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, registered as a Delaware lobbyist for Holt Logistics Corporation on October 3, 2022. That is one month before Darrell Baker did.

Holt Logistics did not hire a Delaware lobbyist. It hired two, a month apart, thirteen months before it sued the State of Delaware in federal court.

None of this is hidden. The Delaware Public Integrity Commission publishes every registration in this section in a single file that downloads in ten seconds. It has been sitting there the entire time.

That is not a secret. That is a public record nobody bothered to read.

V. Everyone in the Fight Paid the Man Who Would Decide It

If the story ended with the Holt side, it would be a story about one interest buying access. It does not end there, and the fuller picture is worse. The same campaign finance reports show the other side of the Edgemoor fight writing checks to Matt Meyer in the same weeks.

Chart C-1: the Edgemoor fight as recorded in Matt Meyer's campaign finance filings, $6,000 from the port corporation side, $5,200 from the Baker side, $1,200 from PhilaPort litigation counsel, $12,400 in total

Add the port corporation’s side, and it comes to $6,000 in October alone. Add Baker’s side, and it comes to $5,200. Add PhilaPort’s litigation counsel, and the total across roughly five weeks is $12,400.

The state instrumentality’s lobbyists paid. The lawyers suing the state instrumentality paid. The lobbyist for the company suing the state instrumentality paid. The president of that company paid, two days after winning.

Both sides of the biggest infrastructure fight in Delaware wrote checks to the same man in the same month. Whoever won the argument, the same person was going to be Governor. They all knew it. That is the part that should frighten you.

Everyone In The Fight Paid

If this story ended with Darrell Baker and Leo Holt, it would be a story about one interest buying access to a governor. That is an ordinary story, and Delaware has told it before.

It does not end there.

The Diamond State Port Corporation is the State of Delaware operating under a corporate name. It owns the Port of Wilmington. It was the losing party at Edgemoor. And like most state agencies in this state, it pays a private law firm to represent it in Dover.

That firm is Barnes and Thornburg, and its Delaware lobbyists work out of 222 Delaware Avenue, Suite 1200, in Wilmington. Four of them are registered with the State to lobby on behalf of the port corporation.

Thomas McGonigle, registered November 1, 2019. Douglas Gramiak, registered January 20, 2020. Shawn Tucker, registered March 17, 2023. James Smith Junior, registered October 20, 2023.

Three of those four wrote checks to Matt Meyer in October 2024. So did two of their wives. So did the firm itself.

Chart C-2. Contributions to Meyer for Delaware, account 01005311, from the Diamond State Port Corporation’s registered lobbyists, their households, and their firm.

Add that to the $5,200 from Darrell Baker’s circle, the $1,200 from Stradley Ronon Stevens and Young, and the money that moved around Judge Kearney’s ruling comes to $13,400.

Every dollar of it went into the same account.

“Leo Holt sued the State of Delaware and won.

The lobbyists the State of Delaware pays to represent its port lost that case.

In one month, both sides wrote checks into the same candidate’s account.”

Tuesday, October 29, 2024.

Look at what happened on a single day.

Douglas Gramiak gave $600 from 5 Harrington Court. Stephanie Gramiak gave $600 from 5 Harrington Court. Shawn Tucker gave $1,000, filed from the office at 222 Delaware Avenue. Michele Tucker gave $1,000 from 414 Derby Way, which is where Shawn Tucker filed his first check ten days earlier. Patricia McGonigle gave $1,200 from 1305A Shipley Road, which is where Thomas McGonigle filed his on October 5.

Five checks. One day. Three households. And the same Tuesday, twenty miles away on the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, Summit Point LLC gave $1,000 from a post office box in Rockland.

Judge Kearney had ruled the previous day.

“October 29, 2024. Douglas Gramiak gave $600. Stephanie Gramiak gave $600. Shawn Tucker gave $1,000. Michele Tucker gave $1,000. Patricia McGonigle gave $1,200. Five checks, one day, three households, two addresses. The judge had ruled the day before.”

Where these men came from.

Now understand who is writing these checks, because none of them are outsiders lobbying a government they came to as strangers.

Thomas McGonigle was chief of staff to Governor Jack Markell. Before that, he was chief legal counsel and policy director to Senator Tom Carper. He left the Governor’s office in November 2012 for Drinker Biddle and Reath. In June 2021, he moved to Barnes and Thornburg. Since November 2019, he has been the registered Delaware lobbyist for the port corporation, and he also carries Bloom Energy, Croda, and NorthPoint Development.

Douglas Gramiak was chief of staff to Governor John Carney. He registered for the Diamond State Port Corporation on January 20, 2020, and on that same day he registered for the Buccini Pollin Group. He also carries Harvey Hanna and Associates, and Aternium, and Stoltz Real Estate Partners, and an entity called Diamond Port Property LLC that he took on in March 2026.

Shawn Tucker ran New Castle County’s Land Use Department. He now lobbies for the port corporation, and he represents developers who appear before the department he used to run.

On June 14, 2021, Barnes and Thornburg announced it had hired McGonigle, Tucker, Gramiak and five of their colleagues out of Drinker Biddle in a single move. Eight people, one firm, one day.

“Thomas McGonigle was Jack Markell’s chief of staff. Douglas Gramiak was John Carney’s chief of staff. Shawn Tucker ran New Castle County’s Land Use Department. All three now lobby the government they used to run, and all three

paid Matt Meyer in October 2024.”

The firm wrote its own check.

Barnes and Thornburg LLP gave $1,200 on October 10, 2024, filed from 11 South Meridian Street in Indianapolis, which is the firm’s headquarters.

That is worth sitting with. A law firm headquartered in Indiana wrote into a Delaware governor’s campaign account in the middle of federal litigation over a Delaware port that the firm’s own Delaware lobbyists are registered to represent.

And the money runs the other way too. Delaware’s own checkbook records $13,719,480.19 paid to Barnes and Thornburg. The State pays this firm. Three of the firm’s registered lobbyists for the State’s port paid the State’s incoming Governor.

Both sides. Same month. Same account.

Set the two charts beside each other, and the shape of it is unmistakable.

The side that won the case paid. Leo Holt personally, on October 30. Four companies registered to his Delaware lobbyist, on October 29 and October 31. That lobbyist’s own law firm, on October 7.

The side that lost the case paid. Three of the four registered lobbyists for the state corporation, two of their wives, and the firm, between October 5 and October 29.

The lawyers for the port authority whose missing signature decided the case paid, on September 26.

Thirty-six days. Thirteen households and firms. $13,400. One account.

There is no version of this where somebody was buying an outcome. The outcome had already happened, and half these people were on the losing end of it. What every one of them was buying was the same thing: a name on a list, in the office where the decision had just landed.

“The side that won paid. The side that lost paid. The lawyers for both paid.

Nobody was buying the ruling. The ruling was already in.

They were buying the government that would decide what came next.”

And one of them did not pay.

James Smith Junior is the fourth registered lobbyist for the Diamond State Port Corporation. He gave nothing to Matt Meyer in the autumn of 2024.

That belongs here for the same reason the six silent Baker clients belong in Section IV. This was not an office memo. Nobody instructed a firm to write checks. Individual people, in individual households, on individual days, decided on their own that it was time to be on that list.

Which is the more troubling explanation. An order can be traced. A shared instinct cannot.

VI-A. The Households, In Full

Delaware caps what one person may give a candidate for statewide office at $1,200. That is 15 Del. C. section 8010; it has no exceptions, and the Delaware Department of Elections publishes the name of everyone who reaches it.

Delaware caps nothing a person gives a political action committee.

Those two sentences built everything in this section. The candidate account is where the law watches, and the names get printed. The political action committee is where the money went. Almost every household below is in both, and the gap between the two columns is the gap between being seen and being decisive.

Chart C-1 named the October 2024 checks. It did not name the families standing behind them, and the families are what show how long this has been running. What follows is every household, taken line by line out of the filed reports of five committees: Meyer for New Castle County, account 01003643; Meyer for Delaware, account 01005311; Change Can't Wait PAC, account 02005278; Citizens for a New Delaware Way PAC; and Citizens for a New Delaware Way Third-Party Advertiser.

Post Office Box 320

Montchanin is a village north of Wilmington with one intersection, one hotel, and a few dozen houses set into the hills above the Brandywine. Post Office Box 320 is there. Across eight years and eight checks, Alan B. Levin sent Matt Meyer $29,100 out of it.

Alan B. Levin ran the Delaware Economic Development Office for Governor Jack Markell and personally negotiated Amazon's entry into this state. Governor Jack Markell, of 3 Guyenne Road in Wilmington, is himself a contributor, $2,100 across four: $300 on June 28, 2019, $300 on November 4, 2019, $1,000 on September 11, 2024, and $500 on July 30, 2025. He chaired the board of the Diamond State Port Corporation at the same time. He organized and raised for Change Cant Wait PAC, the outside committee that spent to make Matt Meyer governor, and none of that was ever hidden: in a 2022 filing to the Delaware Department of Elections a representative of Change Cant Wait PAC wrote that their candidate did not have a primary in that cycle, and a former treasurer of the committee has since said publicly that it was formed in 2021 for Matt Meyer.

Then Governor Matt Meyer made Alan B. Levin chairman of the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council. The man who raised the outside money now certifies the revenue estimate that sets the ceiling on the entire state budget, including the money going to Edgemoor. He had never served a day on the council before he was handed the gavel.

Now watch the eight checks separate.

Five of them went where the law was watching. $500 on April 18, 2016, when Matt Meyer was running for New Castle County Executive. $600 on October 14, 2016. $600 on December 7, 2017. $1,200 on December 18, 2021. $1,200 on September 22, 2024. Eight years of giving, five checks, $4,100, every dollar of it inside the limit.

Three went where nothing is capped. $5,000 on October 28, 2022. $5,000 on September 29, 2023. And $15,000 on June 10, 2024, ninety-two days before the primary.

"Delaware lets one person give a candidate $1,200. Alan B. Levin gave Matt Meyer $29,100. $4,100 of it went into the account with the limit.

$25,000 went where there is no limit at all."

Ellen Levin files from the same post office box: $4,000 across five contributions between December 7, 2017, and September 30, 2024, several of them under the employer line Ellen and Alan Levin Family Foundation. Richard Levin, at 16 Lynthwaite Farm Lane in Wilmington, has given $3,300 across eight, from a $300 check on May 27, 2016, to $500 on September 26, 2024, one of them a $250 check filed jointly on December 3, 2017 as Marilyn and Richard Levin, the only time Marilyn Levin's name appears anywhere in the record. Richard Levine, spelled with an e, at 4602 Bedford Boulevard, has given $1,650 across seven contributions between September 28, 2016, and July 9, 2025, two of those filed as Richard A Levine.

The Montchanin post office box alone is $33,100 across thirteen contributions. All four households together are twenty-eight contributions and $38,050.

The rest of the name is small and scattered. Richard D Levin of 4830 Kennett Pike, Apartment 2830, put $1,000 into Change Can't Wait PAC on June 25, 2024. Sharon Levin of 475 Quartz Street in Redwood City, California, sent $37.50 on October 10, 2025. Andrea Levine of 4602 Bedford Avenue gave $250 on July 11, 2024, and $250 on August 11, 2024. Brian Levine of 1824 Wawaset Street gave $200 on December 23, 2023, and $200 on June 13, 2024. Joshua Levine of 591 2nd Street in Brooklyn, New York, gave $500 on May 16, 2024. James Levine of 750 Harvard Avenue in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, gave $250 on August 29, 2024.

And Lisa Levine, of 208 Carolina Street in Dewey Beach, gave fifteen dollars a month for twenty-four months without missing, from January 19, 2024 through December 19, 2025. Twenty-four contributions, $445. She is the smallest donor in this archive and the steadiest one in it.

Twenty-three contributions and $37,437.50 carry the Levin spelling. Thirty-seven contributions and $3,745 carry the Levine spelling. Sixty contributions in all, and together they come to $41,182.50, which is less than half of the $100,000 that Philip Reese wrote on a single August morning.

Chart D. The four Levin and Levine households, all committees.

And the family checks are the smaller half

Set the Levin and Levine households against what the committee Alan B. Levin organized actually took in, and the proportion is the argument.

Change Cant Wait PAC has moved $2,019,799.02 in and $1,618,138.87 out across 387 itemized lines, spending through Targeted Platform Media LLC and through Devine Mulvey Longabaugh.

Michael R. Bloomberg put in $250,000 on September 4, 2024, six days before the primary. Philip Reese put in $100,000. An entity named for a house at 847 Cranbrook Drive put in another $100,000. Louis J. Capano, $45,000. Gerret Van S. Copeland, $40,000. Drawbridge Claymont, LLC, $55,000 across two. Todd Fryatt, $73,000 across thirteen. Chip DiPaula, $25,000. Jeffrey Carper, $25,000. Richard J. Julian, $25,000. The Principled Veterans Fund, $25,000. Schell Brothers LLC, $25,000. Robert L. Siegfried, $23,800. Jay Patel, $20,000. Rush Street Interactive, $18,800. Onix Group LLC, $16,000. Preston Schell, $15,000. John Christopher Brown, $15,000. Fusco Properties LP, $10,000 across two. The Verino Pettinaro Revocable Trust, $10,000.

A candidate committee in Delaware may take $1,200 from a person. A political action committee may take whatever it can raise.

"$41,182.50 in Levin and Levine family checks is the part with the name on it. $2,019,799.02 through Change Can't Wait PAC is the part without it."

The retired banker on Kennett Pike

Philip Reese used to chair the Delaware Pension Board, the body that oversees the retirement money of every state employee in Delaware. He is retired now and files from 5601 Kennett Pike in Wilmington. He gave Matt Meyer four times.

Two of the four are what you would expect. $1,200 to Meyer for Delaware on June 28, 2022, and $1,200 more on September 11, 2024, both inside the $1,200 limit, both in the account where the names get printed. Nobody stops on those.

The other two went somewhere else. On April 15, 2023, he wrote $2,500, filed as Philip S. Reese from 5803 Kennett Pike, Suite A, two doors up the road, and it went into Change Can't Wait PAC, more than twice what the law would have let him give the candidate. Then on August 9, 2024, he wrote $100,000 into the same committee, eighty-eight days before Delaware elected a governor.

Philip Reese has never explained it. He has not returned calls about it, including a message left at his house with a man who said he was Philip Reese's brother.

"Philip Reese, the former chairman of the Delaware Pension Board, gave $104,900 in four checks. Two obeyed the $1,200 limit and came to $2,400. The other two went into a political action committee where Delaware sets no limit, and they came to $102,500."

On the morning of August 19, 2024, three people at 5907 Valley Way in Wilmington sat down and wrote checks together. Brent Morgan Reese, $1,200. Dorsey Reese, $1,200. Richard Reese the Third, at the same Valley Way address, $1,110, then ten dollars more that same day and ten again on October 19, 2024, $1,130 across three. Virginia Eisenbrey-Reese of 233 Wellington Road gave $600 twice. Natalie Reese of 17 Pheasants Ridge South gave $1,200. Virginia Reese of 910 Augusta Road gave $750 across two.

Six Reese households at four Wilmington addresses, $6,680. With Philip Reese, the family reaches $111,580 across fourteen contributions, and $102,500 of it never touched an account with a ceiling.

Three seats at the same table

The Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council decides how much money Delaware has. Under Article VIII, section 6(b) of the Delaware Constitution, the State may not appropriate more than 98 percent of what that council estimates, which means thirty-three people in a room set the outer wall of the budget and of the bond bill that pays for Edgemoor.

Alan B. Levin chairs it. Philip Reese sits on it.

So does Guy F. Marcozzi of 16 Reese Drive in Newark, a holdover appointed under Governor John Carney. When Alan B. Levin gaveled the meeting of March 17, 2025, to order, Guy F. Marcozzi answered the roll, and Philip Reese did not. Guy F. Marcozzi has given $8,050 across eight contributions, beginning with $250 on December 7, 2017, then $600 on May 21, 2019, $600 on September 18, 2020, and $600 on October 13, 2020, all from 16 Reese Drive. $6,000 of that went to Change Cant Wait PAC in four checks: $3,000 on November 30, 2021, $1,200 on December 12, 2022 and $600 on August 31, 2023, all three filed under the name Mr. Guy Marcozzi from an address the State printed as 16 Reese Crive, and $1,200 on August 5, 2024 filed from 38262 Anna B Street in Rehoboth Beach.

The third name at that table is Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez, and what she runs has to be spelled out, because almost no Delawarean knows what a Secretary of State actually controls in this state.

Governor Matt Meyer nominated her, and she was sworn in on January 28, 2025, as head of the Delaware Department of State. That one job puts her over the Division of Corporations, which registers and taxes the roughly 2 million business entities incorporated here and produces close to a third of the General Fund. It also puts her over the Division of Professional Regulation, the Division of Small Business, Export Delaware, the Office of the State Bank Commissioner, the Public Service Commission, the Division of the Public Advocate, the Public Integrity Commission, the Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs, the Delaware Public Archives, the Division of Libraries, the Division of the Arts, the Division of Human and Civil Rights, the Government Information Center, the Office of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Commissioner, the Merit Employee Relations Board, the Public Employment Relations Board, the Office of New Americans, the Board of Pardons, the Delaware Veterans Home and the Office of Veterans Services. Her own department calls it responsibilities in virtually every aspect of Delaware state government.

She sits on the Cash Management Policy Board. She sits on the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council. And she chairs the board of the Diamond State Port Corporation, which took $110 million in House Bill 500, the Fiscal Year 2027 Bond and Capital Improvements Act that Governor Matt Meyer signed on July 6, 2026, as Volume 85, Chapter 341, Laws of Delaware.

Before any of it, Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez was Economic Development Director of New Castle County and then General Manager of the New Castle County Department of Land Use, both under County Executive Matt Meyer.

"Two members of the council that sets the ceiling on Delaware's budget gave

Matt Meyer's political network $112,950. A third member chairs the corporation

that received the money. The chairman of the council raised it."

2719 Pickering Road

The money from this house is small enough to skip past, and it is in this report for a reason that has nothing to do with the amount.

Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez has given $1,708.32 across seven contributions. $400 on October 23, 2019, filed from 424 South Broadway in Los Angeles, where she was practicing land use and government contracts law at Sheppard Mullin and at Glaser Weil.

$250 on November 16, 2021. $258.32 twice on September 30, 2022. $100 on June 6, 2023. $250 on December 31, 2023. $191.68 on July 1, 2024. Six of the seven came from 2719 Pickering Road in Wilmington. Not one of the seven was filed under the hyphenated surname she uses in office. The Delaware Department of Elections carries her as Charuni Patibanda and Charuni P Patibanda.

Three more names file from that same house. Madhava Patibanda gave $1,200 across three contributions on December 30, 2021, September 28, 2023, and October 3, 2023. Patibanda Sarma gave $1,000 on December 28, 2022. And on May 15, 2024, Pvln Sarma wrote $500, then $500 more the same day, into Change Can't Wait PAC. Marcos Sanchez, the husband of Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez, gave $658.32 across three contributions from 1201 I Street Northeast in Washington: $150 on December 30, 2022, $8.32 on July 1, 2024, and $500 on July 13, 2024.

Sixteen contributions, $5,566.64. Twelve of them and $4,508.32, came out of one house.

Every other dollar from Pickering Road went into a candidate account, where the ceiling is $1,200, and the name gets printed. The two Sarma checks of May 15 went to the committee with no ceiling, five months before the election, out of the home of the woman who chairs the corporation that received the money.

The name Delaware spelled wrong

John Hynansky built the Winner Automotive Group and has been close to the Biden family for decades. John Hynansky files from 911 North Tatnall Street in Wilmington, and the household has given $106,900 across fourteen contributions from December 2, 2016, through March 27, 2026, with $86,900 of it in place by September 15, 2024, and $100,000 of it went to Change Can't Wait PAC.

Three of those checks are $25,000 apiece. June 8, 2023. March 25, 2024. August 7, 2024. John Hynansky wrote the first two and $53,000 in all. Michael Hynansky wrote the third that August from 1300 North Union Street in Greenville, and reaches $52,700 across seven: $300 on February 25, 2019 and $1,200 on June 9, 2022 from 4820 Kennett Pike, $2,500 on October 1, 2023 and $2,500 on May 16, 2024 from 1700 Walnut Green Road, the $25,000 on August 7, 2024, $1,200 on September 15, 2024 back at Kennett Pike, and $20,000 on March 27, 2026 from Walnut Green Road. Ericka Hynansky gave $1,200 on April 24, 2023.

Go back to the first of the three. On June 8, 2023, the $25,000 was entered as John Hyanski, at 911 Tatnall Street. The surname lost a letter. The street lost its direction. The Delaware Department of Elections took the filing, published it, and left it there.

Search the State's own database for Hynansky today, and the largest contribution Change Cant Wait PAC had ever received does not come back.

Then on March 27, 2026, sixteen months after the election was over, Michael Hynansky sent Change Cant Wait PAC another $20,000. There was no election left to spend it on.

Louis J. Capano of 105 Foulk Road gave twice. $25,000 on February 9, 2024, $20,000 on August 20, 2024. $45,000, and not $1 of it in a candidate account. Nothing he gave was subject to a limit, so nothing he gave had to be.

Thirty-eight days on Boxwood Road

Harvey, Hanna and Associates is the firm that bought the shuttered General Motors plant on Boxwood Road on a deed that recorded ten dollars.

Between December 18, 2021 and January 25, 2022, seven people connected to that firm gave Matthew Meyer $8,400. Every one of them wrote the maximum the law allows, and they wrote it inside thirty-eight days.

E. Thomas Harvey, a principal of Harvey, Hanna and Associates, gave $1,200 on December 18, 2021, from 22 Center Meeting Road in Wilmington, and Robin Harvey gave $1,200 from the same address the same day. Thomas Harvey of 301 Old Kennett Pike in Wilmington gave $1,200 on December 30, 2021. Lexie Hanna gave $1,200 on January 3, 2022, from 108 Brook Valley Road in Wilmington, and Thomas Hanna, a principal of the firm, gave $1,200 from the same address that same day. Katherine Kinnard gave $1,200 on January 4, 2022. Murray Dingwall gave $1,200 on January 25, 2022. Seven names, seven checks, $1,200 apiece.

On January 1, 2022, in the middle of that window, Douglas Gramiak registered as the Delaware lobbyist for Harvey, Hanna and Associates. He was already the registered lobbyist for the Diamond State Port Corporation.

"Seven people connected to Harvey, Hanna and Associates gave Matt Meyer $8,400 in thirty-eight days, every check at the legal maximum. On January 1, 2022, inside

that window, the port corporation's own lobbyist registered to represent them."

Ten days into that same window, on December 28, 2021, Wilson Davis of 208 Alapocas Drive gave $1,150. Wilson B Davis of the same address later put $5,000 into Change Can't Wait PAC on June 20, 2024, and had given $600 to Meyer for New Castle County on October 30, 2019, $6,750 across three. Four of the seven came back in October 2024 and wrote the maximum again. Across all the years, the circle is thirteen contributions and $15,000. E. Thomas Harvey and Thomas Harvey account for $3,600 across three. Robin Harvey of 22 Center Meeting Road, $2,400 across two. Thomas Hanna of 108 Brook Valley Road, $2,400 across two. Lexie Hanna of the same address, $2,400 across two. Maureen Harvey of 301 Old Kennett Road, $1,200 on July 17, 2024. Katherine Kinnard, $1,200. Murray Dingwall, $1,200. And Harvey, Hanna and Associates itself, $600 on October 13, 2016. Every dollar of it stayed in the candidate accounts, where the names get published.

The firm that used to be New Castle County

Barnes and Thornburg LLP is an Indianapolis firm at 11 South Meridian Street. In June 2021, it opened in Wilmington by lifting most of the Delaware government relations practice out of Faegre Drinker Biddle and Reath. What it assembled after that is the reason this section exists.

Thomas McGonigle runs the Wilmington office. He was chief of staff to Governor Jack Markell from 2009 to 2012, and he is a registered lobbyist for the Diamond State Port Corporation. He has given $3,300 across five contributions since September 26, 2016, the last of them $1,200 on October 5, 2024. Twenty-four days later, Patricia McGonigle gave $1,200 from 1305 Shipley Road, Apartment A, the same address, and $1,200 more on November 20, 2025, $2,400 across two. Nine years, seven contributions, $5,700 out of one apartment.

Douglas Gramiak is co-director of state government affairs. He was chief of staff to Governor John Carney from 2017 to 2019. He is the registered lobbyist for the Diamond State Port Corporation, for Harvey, Hanna and Associates, and for the Buccini Pollin Group, and he registered for Buccini Pollin on January 20, 2020, the same day he registered for the port. He and Stephanie Gramiak each gave $600 on October 29, 2024, from 5 Harrington Court.

Mary Kate McLaughlin is the other co-director of state government affairs. She came over from Faegre Drinker in June 2021 after serving in the administrations of Governor Ruth Ann Minner and Governor Jack Markell, including as chief of staff to the Delaware Secretary of Education. She gave $850 across two contributions in October 2024.

That is the political side. Now the land use side, and this is the part nobody has written down.

Shawn P. Tucker was First Assistant County Attorney of New Castle County, responsible for every land use matter and every piece of litigation that came out of one. He led the rewrite and adoption of the Unified Development Code, which is the zoning and subdivision law New Castle County still runs on today. When it passed, the county put him in charge of the Department of Land Use to roll it out. He is now a partner at Barnes and Thornburg LLP and one of the leading land use and zoning attorneys in Delaware, recognized in that practice area since 2023, named to the Delaware 222 list in 2024, 2025, and 2026, and a registered lobbyist for the Diamond State Port Corporation. His projects include the Stoltz Amazon warehouse, the Cavaliers Country Club redevelopment, and the Aldi warehouse in New Castle.

Tucker has given $6,480 across eleven contributions since September 28, 2016, $2,200 of it to Change Can't Wait PAC, including $200 on October 19, 2024, and $1,000 on October 29, filed from 222 Delaware Avenue, Suite 1200. Michele Tucker, filing as Michele W Tucker and Michele Tucker at 414 Derby Way, has given $2,900 across four, and a fifth check of $1,000 on August 18, 2023, came in as Michelle W. Tucker of 37589 Atlantic Street in Rehoboth Beach, and that one went to Change Can't Wait PAC. The name reaches $3,900 across five. The Derby Way household is $9,380 across fifteen.

James Smith Jr. was assistant general manager of that same department. He ran assessment, geographical information systems, code enforcement, community governance, and planning. He drafted the legislation for the Unified Development Code, for the Property Maintenance Code, and for the Residential Rental Properties Code, and he carried that legislation to New Castle County Council himself. He is now a project manager at Barnes and Thornburg LLP, working the same approvals he used to administer. He has given $1,220 across three contributions, all of it inside the candidate accounts.

In September 2025, the firm went back to the same department and hired two more. Janet Vinc brought more than two decades in municipal planning and land use management, including economic development work in Smyrna. Brad Shockley brought more than twenty-five years in the public sector, and his name appears as Bradford Shockley of the New Castle County Department of Land Use on a Delaware Department of Transportation review letter dated May 15, 2023. Delaware Business Times reported the reason without dressing it up: the firm hopes that intimate knowledge of the county's processes will translate to shorter approval times for its growing client base.

"Barnes and Thornburg LLP did not hire people who know New Castle County. It hired New Castle County. Shawn P. Tucker led the rewrite of the zoning code. James Smith Jr. drafted the legislation and carried it to Council. Janet Vinc and Brad Shockley administered it. All four now sit in the same land use practice,

and the firm says out loud that it bought them for speed."

The firm itself has written Matt Meyer three checks, on September 27, 2023, October 10, 2024, and November 20, 2025. $1,200 each, the statutory maximum, three years running, $3,600 in all.

Delaware's own checkbook shows $13,719,480.19 going the other way.

"Barnes and Thornburg LLP gave Matt Meyer $3,600.

The State of Delaware has paid Barnes and Thornburg LLP $13,719,480.19."

Even the building has a history. The Wilmington office is at 222 Delaware Avenue. Shawn P. Tucker filed from Suite 1200 in October 2024, and directory listings put him in Suite 1410. Saul Ewing Arnstein and Lehr LLP, the development firm of Pam Scott and Wendie Stabler, filed its contribution from Suite 1200 on September 26, 2016. Both of them gave in their own names as well. Pam Scott, of 209 Meadowdale Drive in Newark, has given $1,175 across four contributions, $125 on October 28, 2016; $150 on October 23, 2019; $150 on December 18, 2019; and $750 filed as Pamela Scott on October 27, 2024. Wendie Stabler, of Post Office Box 123 in Montchanin, has given $625 across three, $125 filed as Wendie C Stabler on October 28, 2016, $250 on October 3, 2023, and $250 on August 12, 2024. Drinker Biddle and Reath LLP, the firm the Barnes and Thornburg team walked out of in 2021, filed from Suite 1410 on September 26, 2016, and gave again on November 4, 2019. Stradley Ronon Stevens and Young LLP gave $1,200 on September 26, 2024. And on March 7, 2024, Labaton Keller Sucharow LLP put $20,000 into Change Can't Wait PAC from Suite 1510, five floors up. The port lobbyists, their households, and their firms come to $23,280 across thirty-one contributions.

The man who signs the reports

One more man crosses between New Castle County and this money, and he does not work for a law firm at all.

Thomas Alexander Meitzler goes by Alex. He is a professional engineer with thirty years in traffic and transportation. He has worked at Pennoni, at VanDemark and Lynch, Inc., at A. Morton Thomas and Associates, Inc., and now at Traffic Planning and Design, Inc., which covers Delaware out of an office at 111 East Main Street in Elkton, Maryland.

He is also the treasurer of Change Can't Wait PAC. He has signed every report the committee has filed since it opened on June 17, 2021, straight through to the one filed on August 17, 2026. Fourteen reports, five years, one signature at the bottom of each. He turns up on the donor list of the committee he administers exactly twice: $90 on September 21, 2021 and $10 on April 18, 2022, which is $100 even, the precise figure at which Delaware starts printing a contributor's name. He has never given a dollar to a Matt Meyer campaign account.

Now look at what he did with the rest of his time.

In 2015, the Commercial Development Company of St. Louis bought the dead Evraz Claymont Steel mill, 413 acres on the east side of Interstate 495, running along both sides of Philadelphia Pike and down the southwest side of Naamans Road. Stephen Collins of the Commercial Development Company likes to call Claymont Philadelphia's most southern suburb. On January 31, 2024, Stephen Collins gave Meyer for Delaware $599 from 49 Sherin Drive in Newark. Six hundred dollars is the threshold at which Delaware requires an occupation and employer on the filing. He gave $599. They named the project First State Crossing and drew 3.75 million square feet onto it: 620 townhomes, 576 apartments, 844,000 square feet of offices, 370,000 of industrial, a 120-room hotel, 47,000 square feet of retail. Tax parcels 06-048.00-001, 06-059.00-162, 06-072.00-198, and 06-073.00-001, split-zoned Industrial and Heavy Industrial, none of it buildable without subdivision and rezoning approval from New Castle County.

Traffic Planning and Design, Inc. wrote the traffic impact study. The Delaware Department of Transportation addressed its review letters to Mr. Alex Meitzler by name on September 14, 2021, on July 3, 2023, and on July 5, 2023. Annamaria Furmato, the Traffic Impact Study Group Project Engineer, signed them. Copies went to Russ Becker of Claymont Properties LLC, to Douglas Eitelman of VanDemark and Lynch, Inc., which is both the site engineer on the project and the firm Alex Meitzler used to work for, to David L. Edgell at the Office of State Planning Coordination, to Andrew J. Parker of McCormick Taylor, Inc., who did the review for the State, and to three officials of the New Castle County Department of Land Use: Antoni Sekowski, Owen C. Robatino, and Bradford Shockley, who two years later would be sitting at Barnes and Thornburg.

Then read the finding in the July 3, 2023 letter. The proposed First State Crossing development would meet the New Castle County Level of Service standards as stated in Section 40.11.210 of the Unified Development Code.

Section 40.11.210. That is the Level of Service standard, the number a project has to hit before New Castle County will let it pour traffic onto a public road. It is the provision Shawn P. Tucker led the rewrite of, and James Smith Jr. drafted the legislation for. Both men now work at Barnes and Thornburg LLP.

So the study that moved 413 acres through New Castle County was graded against a section of code written by two men who now sell their knowledge of it, and filed by the treasurer of the committee that spent $1,568,590.17 to elect the County Executive who ran the department reviewing it.

"The traffic study that carried 413 acres of Philadelphia Pike through New Castle County was measured against Section 40.11.210 of the Unified Development Code. Shawn P. Tucker led the rewrite of that code. James Smith Jr. drafted it.

Thomas Alexander Meitzler, whose name is on the State review letters,

signs the financial reports of the committee that spent

$1,568,590.17 to make Matt Meyer governor."

One more line in that letter is worth sitting with. Between the September 2022 submission and the July 2023 review, Site Parcel 1 stopped being 432,000 square feet of offices, a restaurant, retail, and a pharmacy and became a 300,012 square foot cold storage warehouse. Site Parcel 3 stopped being an industrial park with offices and became a 358,000 square foot warehouse. That is 658,012 square feet of warehouse dropped onto Philadelphia Pike, two miles from the Edgemoor terminal site, after the plan had already been through review.

Remember Philadelphia Pike. It comes back.

The first five months

Meyer for Delaware opened on August 9, 2021. What landed in that account before the year was out tells you who was paying attention.

Batta Environmental Associates, Inc. of 6 Garfield Way in Newark gave $250 on December 28, 2021, and has given $550 across three since November 3, 2016. Dev Sitaram of Karins and Associates gave $600 on December 28, 2021, and has given $1,725 across seven since October 28, 2016. Deirdre Smith of Verdantas, formerly Duffield Associates, gave $600 on December 18, 2021, and has given $2,000 across five since May 14, 2019. Landmark Engineering, Inc., of 200 Continental Drive, Suite 400, in Newark, gave $250 on December 15, 2022. Pennoni of 1900 Market Street in Philadelphia has given $2,900 across six payments since December 7, 2017, including $500 on August 30, 2021. These are the firms that write the traffic studies, the environmental assessments, and the site plans that a New Castle County land use application lives or dies on, and they all gave inside the same window. Saul Ewing Arnstein and Lehr LLP gave $300 on November 10, 2021, and has given $4,500 across eight contributions since September 28, 2016, the first of those filed from 222 Delaware Avenue, Suite 1200. A. Kimberly Hoffman of Morris James LLP gave $200 the same day and $600 more across two contributions on November 28, 2022, $800 in all.

Barbara Neuse of the Buccini Pollin Group gave $1,200 on December 25, 2021. Chaim Weiss of Hope Commercial Holdings, a warehouse developer, gave $1,200 on December 27, 2021, from 15 Buchanan Street in Lakewood, New Jersey, and $5,000 to Change Can't Wait PAC on February 24, 2023, and $6,200 across two. Rachel Heisler of 10 Ardmoor Lane in Chadds Ford gave $1,200 on December 28, 2021. Jerome Heisler of Post Office Box 582 and Joshua Heisler of 10 Ardmoor Lane each gave $1,200 the next day. Jerome S Heisler Jr put $5,000 into Change Can't Wait PAC on December 16, 2023. Jerome Heisler gave $1,200 again on October 7, 2024, and Joshua Heisler $600 on November 3, 2024. The Heislers of the Reybold Group are $10,400 across six. Cheryl A. Staffieri of Fusco Management gave $1,200 on December 29, 2021, from 1702 North Park Drive. Brian Disabatino of EDIS Construction gave $1,200 on November 14, 2021, from 27 The Strand in Historic New Castle, and $600 before that on August 2, 2020, $1,800 across two. Carmen Facciolo of Emery Hill Real Estate gave $1,200 on December 29, 2021, from 607 Kilburn Road, and has given $3,725 across five since November 7, 2016.

The developers

The Buccini Pollin Group and the people who run it have given $19,850 across eighteen contributions, beginning with $200 from Donato R Buccini on August 23, 2016. Chris Buccini, Robert Buccini, and Maria Bonetti de Buccini each gave $600 on October 11, 2016, from 322 A Street. David Pollin gave $250 on December 3, 2019, from Chevy Chase, Maryland. Barbara Neuse of 105 Hidden Pond Drive in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, gave $600 on September 9, 2020, and $1,200 on December 25, 2021. In four days at the end of December 2021, Chris Buccini, Mati Buccini, and Rob Buccini each gave $1,200; then David Pollin and Kirstin Pollin of 6601 Elgin Lane in Bethesda each gave $1,200; then Elizabeth Buccini gave $1,200 on December 27. Bernadette Buccini gave $1,200 on January 1, 2022; Maria Buccini $1,200 on November 10, 2022; and Kirsten Pollin $1,200 on August 5, 2024. And $5,000 went to Change Can't Wait PAC in two checks four days apart: $2,500 from Robert Buccini on November 30, 2023, from 217 Cossart Road, which the State printed as Cossat Road, and $2,500 from Christopher F Buccini on December 4, 2023, from 1000 North West Street. Douglas Gramiak of Barnes and Thornburg has carried their lobbying registration since January 20, 2020, the same day he took the port.

Pettinaro interests at 234 North James Street in Newport, including Gregory Pettinaro, have given $14,000 across six contributions since September 28, 2016. $10,600 of it went to Change Can't Wait PAC: $600 from Gregory Pettinaro on August 23, 2023, and $10,000 from the Verino Pettinaro Revocable Trust on April 4, 2024, filed with the trust's own name misspelled as Recocable.

Gerret Van S. Copeland, the du Pont heir who filed from Post Office Box 4060 in Greenville, gave $43,600 across six, filed variously as Gerret S Van Copeland, Gerret Van Copeland, and Gerret Van S Copeland. $600 on December 31, 2019, $600 on January 9, 2020, $1,200 on July 2, 2022, then $15,000 into Change Can't Wait PAC on November 13, 2023, and $25,000 more on May 26, 2024, then $1,200 on October 23, 2024. Tatiana Copeland of 175 Brecks Lane has given $3,600 across four on the same four candidate dates. The household reaches $47,200 across ten.

Fusco entities at 200 Airport Road in New Castle have given $13,000 across six since June 21, 2016, filed variously as Fund-Fusco Properties LP, Fund-Fusco Enterprises L.P. and Fusco Properties LP. $10,000 of it went to Change Can't Wait PAC, $5,000 on October 10, 2023, and $5,000 on August 20, 2024.

On June 3, 2024, an entity called 847 Cranbrook, LLC put $100,000 into Change Can't Wait PAC. It is named for a house on Cranbrook Drive but files from 300 Delaware Avenue, Suite 1370. It traces back to Michael Stortini, a Wilmington developer, formerly a managing partner at the Frank Robino Company and once in court against Donald Trump over an Atlantic City property. In 2013, Michael Stortini was indicted on charges that he diverted more than $600,000 out of his employees' retirement accounts, left payroll taxes unpaid, and took $900,000 from the company, roughly $500,000 of it spent at casinos. He pleaded guilty in 2014, served two years, and came home in 2016. The Internal Revenue Service put a lien on 847 Cranbrook Drive in 2017. New Castle County sold the house at a sheriff's sale in 2019 to Midnight Moon Trading Co LLC, which handed it the same day to 847 Cranbrook Drive LLC, formed the month before by Paul Stortini, his son. Ricardo McKendrick, who has worked with Paul Stortini at HS Capital, has said the contribution was fully legal.

What has never been published is what the family did first. On July 11, 2023, eleven months before the LLC wrote its $100,000, Michael Stortini, Lisa Stortini and Paul Stortini each gave $1,200 to Meyer for Delaware. Three checks, one day, $3,600, the maximum apiece. Michael Stortini and Lisa Stortini both filed from 300 Meredith Avenue, Suite 1370. Paul Stortini, who runs HS Capital, filed from 847 Cranbrook Drive itself.

Todd Fryatt is president of ECA Solar, and in March 2024 his company sold two southern Delaware solar farms to a company owned by Brookfield. He has given $75,401 across fifteen contributions, and $73,000 of it went to Change Can't Wait PAC. It started with $10,000 on May 2, 2022 and did not stop: $500 in December 2022, $2,000 and $2,500 on the same day in June 2023, $5,000 that August, $5,000 that September, $3,000 in March 2024, $5,000 in June, $5,000 in July, $5,000 in October, $5,000 on September 11, 2025, and $25,000 on April 16, 2026, his largest. He filed thirteen of the fifteen from 711 East 7th Street in Boston and two from 6 Saddleback Drive in Nashua, New Hampshire. He is the largest individual donor in this entire report, and no one has ever named him in it.

Richard J. Julian is a developer at 111 Greenspring Road in Greenville. The house has given $29,800 across seven contributions, and $25,000 of it went to Change Can't Wait PAC: a $20,000 check on March 11, 2024, filed as Richard J Julian, and $5,000 more on August 3, 2026. The remaining $4,800 is spread across Richard Julian, Catherine Julian, and Claire Julian in the candidate account, where the ceiling is $1,200.

The five-figure checks nobody has named

Set the households aside and look at what else went into Change Can't Wait PAC. These are the contributors who wrote five figures and whose names have never appeared in print.

Chip DiPaula, of 2 Penn Street in Rehoboth Beach, gave $27,400 across three contributions. $1,200 to Meyer for Delaware on August 4, 2024, $25,000 to Change Can't Wait PAC the very same day, and $1,200 more to the candidate on September 25, 2024.

Jeffrey Carper, of 748 Burke Road Northeast in Atlanta, Georgia, gave $26,450 across five. $1,200 on August 30, 2022, then $5,000 and $10,000 into the PAC on the same day, June 5, 2024, then $10,000 more on August 22, 2024, then $250 on August 30, 2025.

Robert L Siegfried, of 1830 Masters Way in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, gave $23,800 into the PAC across three: $3,800 on April 27, 2023, then $10,000 on June 3, 2024, and $10,000 more the next day.

Jay Patel gave $22,400 across four, starting at $600 from 2511 West 4th Street in Wilmington in November 2017 and ending with $20,000 into Change Can't Wait PAC on August 19, 2024, from 2500 West 4th Street.

The Schell family of Rehoboth Beach comes to $78,600. Chris Schell of 20184 Phillips Street gave $21,200 across four, including $10,000 into the PAC on March 13, 2024, and $10,000 more on August 16, 2024. Preston Schell gave $17,400 across four, including $5,000 on June 6, 2022, and $10,000 on March 18, 2024, both filed from 18949 Coastal Highway, Suite 301. Joseph M Schell of Vero Beach, Florida, gave $10,000 on August 20, 2024. Lori J Schell gave $600 on November 10, 2021. And Schell Brothers LLC itself gave $25,000 on September 10, 2025, eleven months after the election was over.

Rush Street Interactive, the Chicago online gaming company at 900 North Michigan Avenue, Suite 950, gave $15,100 on November 19, 2025, and $3,700 two days later, $18,800 in all, a year after the election and with nothing on the ballot.

Onix Group LLC of 150 Onix Drive in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania gave $16,000 on September 30, 2024. John Christopher Brown of 11 Carolina Street in Dewey Beach gave $15,000 on August 27, 2024. Norman Aerenson of 1634 Charis Circle in Wilmington gave $12,567 across three, including $10,000 on May 24, 2024. Uday Uthaman of Post Office Box 8252 in Newark gave $12,200 across four, including $10,000 on March 30, 2024. Lawrence Stuardi of 829 Macclesfield Road in Furlong, Pennsylvania, gave $12,400 across three, including $10,000 on April 19, 2024.

M. Davis, the Wilmington industrial contractor, gave $17,000 across six from three different addresses: 19 Germay Drive in Wilmington, 227 Daylesford Court in Kennett Square, and 9 Tyler Way in Newark. The $10,000 came on June 7, 2024, and $5,000 more on September 15, 2025.

David M. Canterra of 2301 North Dupont Highway in New Castle gave $10,000 on March 26, 2024. Philip E Butler Sr of 636 Argyle Avenue in Ambler, Pennsylvania, gave $10,000 on May 15, 2024. And Frederick Airpark Properties LLC gave $10,000 on July 30, 2024, from 15215 Shady Grove Road, Suite 201, in Rockville, Maryland, the same building and the same suite number as Rickman Management LLC, which gave $10,000 of its own.

The Principled Veterans Fund, a committee filing from Post Office Box 813 in Alexandria, Virginia, gave Change Can't Wait PAC $25,000 on September 5, 2024, one day after Michael R. Bloomberg's $250,000 and five days before the primary.

ABC Merit Shop PAC, the political committee of the Associated Builders and Contractors at 31 Blevins Drive in New Castle, has given $10,400 across eight contributions since June 7, 2016, including $5,000 into Change Can't Wait PAC on July 17, 2024.

Robert Field of 2413 West 17th Street in Wilmington has given $10,350 across ten contributions since October 18, 2016, starting at $100 and ending with $2,500 into the PAC on August 8, 2024, and $5,000 more on November 15, 2025.

And the Delaware corporate bar shows up in the PAC after the election, not before it. Stuart M Grant of 11 Summit Lane in Greenville gave $5,000 on December 10, 2023, and $5,000 on July 16, 2024. Garrett B Moritz of 1801 North Bancroft Parkway gave $5,000 on April 27, 2024, and $5,000 on August 28, 2025. David Ross of 708 Edgehill Road gave $5,000 on September 22, 2025. Marcos Ramos of 813 Owls Nest Road gave $5,000 on December 18, 2025. Benjamin Y Lieber of Washington gave $5,000 on September 23, 2025, and $5,000 more on April 27, 2026.

"Twelve contributors who have never been named in print put $176,167 into Change Can't Wait PAC. Not one of them could have given the candidate more than $1,200."

VI-B. What They Paid, And What They Got

Set the contributions beside the money moving the other way, because that is the only comparison that matters to anyone paying taxes in New Castle County.

Barnes and Thornburg LLP gave Matt Meyer $3,600 in three checks at the statutory maximum. Delaware's own checkbook shows the State has paid Barnes and Thornburg LLP $13,719,480.19.

Murphy Marine Services Inc., the stevedoring company that has worked the Port of Wilmington for decades in the fresh fruit trade, gave nothing. Not one dollar in sixteen years. Darrell J. Baker has been its registered lobbyist since October 20, 2008. On January 10, 2025, by Resolution 25-03, the Diamond State Port Corporation paid $2,850,000 for 1.91 acres at 701 Christiana Avenue, which is Murphy Marine's business address, and added that ground to the leasehold of Enstructure, the private company that runs the port.

Drawbridge Claymont, LLC took $1,000,000 from the Site Readiness Fund on March 28, 2022, for fifty-eight acres at 6300 Philadelphia Pike. It has since given Change Can't Wait PAC $55,000, and Keith Delaney has given $30,000 more, one check of it filed from 6300 Philadelphia Pike itself.

Harvey, Hanna and Associates bought the shuttered General Motors plant on Boxwood Road on a deed that recorded ten dollars. Seven people connected to that firm gave $8,400 in thirty-eight days, and Douglas Gramiak registered as the firm's Delaware lobbyist on January 1, 2022, inside that window, while already holding the Diamond State Port Corporation.

The Diamond State Port Corporation itself took $110 million in House Bill 500. Four of its registered lobbyists, two of their spouses, and their firm paid into Matt Meyer's account. Summit North Marina, whose lobbyist and registered agent is the same Darrell J. Baker, is the subject of the $30 million purchase in the same bill, and four companies at that marina gave $2,800.

"Barnes and Thornburg gave Matt Meyer $3,600. Delaware has paid Barnes and Thornburg $13,719,480.19. Murphy Marine gave nothing in sixteen years,

and Delaware paid $2,850,000 for 1.91 acres at its address

and handed the ground to the port's operator."

Aternium, and the lobbyists who arrived first

On July 29, 2025, James Smith Junior registered as the Delaware lobbyist for Aternium Inc. On September 1, 2025, Douglas Gramiak registered for the same company. Both men are registered lobbyists for the Diamond State Port Corporation.

In late September 2025, Aternium received $1,000,000 from the Delaware Accelerator and Seed Capital Program, which is federally funded and state-administered, to develop engineering for clean hydrogen. The port corporation's own lobbyists signed the company one and two months before the money arrived.

Aternium sits inside the Mid-Atlantic Clean Hydrogen Hub, known as MACH2, which the United States Department of Energy selected on October 13, 2023, for award negotiations of up to $750 million across Delaware, southeastern Pennsylvania, and South Jersey. On April 22, 2026, the Department of Energy preserved nearly $5 billion for five hydrogen hubs, including MACH2, the same month the Army Corps of Engineers reissued the Edgemoor permit.

Run the rest of the consortium against the State's lobbyist file. Bloom Energy is in MACH2, and Thomas McGonigle has been its Delaware lobbyist since January 12, 2016. Croda Inc. is in MACH2, and Thomas McGonigle and Shawn P. Tucker have both been its lobbyists since June 18, 2015. The Delaware City Refinery, owned by PBF Energy, is in MACH2, and Patrick Allen has been its lobbyist since December 1, 2023. Patrick Allen is also the lobbyist for Enstructure and for International Longshoremen's Association Local 1694.

Bloom Energy gave Matt Meyer $1,200 on November 21, 2024, filed from 4353 North First Street in San Jose, California.

"Four companies inside a $750 million federal hydrogen program are represented in Dover by the same handful of people who represent the Port of Wilmington,

its private operator, and its longshoremen."

The other addresses on Douglas Gramiak's list

Douglas Gramiak holds thirty-five lobbying registrations. He took the Diamond State Port Corporation on January 20, 2020, and took the Buccini Pollin Group the same day. He took Harvey, Hanna and Associates on January 1, 2022. He took Stoltz Real Estate Partners. He took Aternium on September 1, 2025.

And on March 1, 2026, four months before House Bill 500, he took an entity called Diamond Port Property LLC. That is a warehouse and housing development on the Christina River in Southbridge, on the former Diamond Oil site, which carries a 2005 deed restriction from the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control barring residential use, and whose Wilmington zoning certificate the city later said was issued in error.

Jack Stoltz and Susan Stoltz each gave $1,200 on October 24, 2024, from Post Office Box 371 and Post Office Box 731 in Montchanin. Shawn P. Tucker is the land use attorney on the Stoltz Amazon warehouse. Douglas Gramiak is Stoltz Real Estate Partners' registered lobbyist.

Thomas McGonigle holds forty-one registrations of his own, including NorthPoint Development since October 9, 2018, and Barnes and Thornburg LLP itself since October 1, 2024. NorthPoint sponsored a Philadelphia logistics panel alongside Holt Logistics Corporation.

The men who ran the money before they lobbied it

Michael Houghton chaired the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council for eight years. On March 16, 2026, he asked the Delaware Department of State for corporate revenue figures it had not produced, and two days later an email from Governor Matt Meyer's office ended his service.

Michael Houghton had given Matt Meyer $1,200 on September 21, 2024, filed from 27527 Medallion Avenue in Millsboro. Vivian Houghton gave $600 on October 9, 2019, $600 on September 18, 2020, $1,200 on August 16, 2023, $1,200 on September 26, 2024, and $300 twice in December 2025. Leigh Houghton gave $1,200 on October 27, 2024. Michael Houghton gave $300 on December 4, 2019. The household is $6,900 across nine contributions.

"Michael Houghton and his household paid Matt Meyer $6,900 across nine contributions. Seventeen months after the last of them, Matt Meyer's office

ended his service by email, two days after he asked the Department of State

a question about revenue."

Geoffrey Sawyer, the Faegre Drinker partner who runs Delaware's unclaimed property program for the State, gave $1,200 on December 31, 2022, $2,500 into Change Cant Wait PAC on June 11, 2024, $1,200 on September 19, 2024 and $1,200 on July 30, 2025, $6,700 across five, from 1406 Gilpin Avenue in Wilmington. The wider Sawyer family gives $13,350 across twenty-one contributions. Unclaimed property is the fund Delaware leaned on to pay for the port.

Gregory Patterson, Secretary of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, gave $250 on September 26, 2024, from 34 Coventry Court in Dover, the same day Stradley Ronon Stevens and Young wrote the first check in the Edgemoor sequence. Secretary Patterson is the official who later told legislators the State had not seen payment from the Summit North Marina operators for a number of years, before Delaware committed $30 million to buy it.

Tuesday, October 29, 2024, had six checks

Section V counted five that day. There was a sixth, and it came from the other side of the dock.

Allen Strategies LLC gave $1,200 on October 29, 2024, filed from 4520 Lancaster Pike, Suite 320 in Wilmington. The lobbyist registration for Patrick Allen reads 4250 Lancaster Pike, Suite 230. Both numbers are transposed on the two filings.

Patrick Allen is the registered Delaware lobbyist for Enstructure, the company that operates the Port of Wilmington, since June 1, 2023. He is the registered lobbyist for International Longshoremen's Association Local 1694 since April 15, 2025. He held GT USA, the first company Delaware handed a fifty-year lease of the port, since February 15, 2018. And he holds PBF Energy, which owns the Delaware City Refinery.

So on the Tuesday after Judge Kearney vacated the Edgemoor permit, six checks went into Meyer for Delaware. Douglas Gramiak: $600 and Stephanie Gramiak: $600 from 5 Harrington Court. Shawn P. Tucker: $1,000 from 222 Delaware Avenue and Michele Tucker: $1,000 from 414 Derby Way. Patricia McGonigle: $1,200 from 1305A Shipley Road. And Allen Strategies LLC: $1,200. Twenty miles away, Summit Point LLC gave $1,000 from Post Office Box 422 in Rockland. Seven checks, $6,600, one day.

And October 7 had two, not one. Darrell J. Baker, Esquire, Pennsylvania, gave $1,200 that day. So did Edward Hazzouri, of Hazzouri and Associates at 115 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, filing from 595 Linton Hill Road in Newtown, Pennsylvania. Hazzouri registered as Holt Logistics Corporation's Delaware lobbyist on October 3, 2022, a month before Baker did. Both of Holt's Delaware lobbyists paid Matt Meyer on the same day, twenty-one days before the ruling.

Rockland has more than one box in this story. Summit Point LLC files from Post Office Box 422. Westport Maven Group LLC gave $1,200 on September 9, 2024, and $1,200 on October 10, 2024 from Post Office Box 384. Sean Finnigan, who is the registered lobbyist for Enstructure and for D2 Management LLC and who files from Post Office Box 394, gave $500 himself on October 10, 2024. Three post office boxes in a village of about two hundred people.

James Smith Junior, the fourth registered lobbyist for the Diamond State Port Corporation, gave nothing in the autumn of 2024. He gave $600 on July 1, 2022, $600 on October 30, 2023, and $20 on February 18, 2024, $1,220 across three, all of it in the candidate account.

Why nobody had to coordinate

There is a test a hostile reader would run first, so it belongs here: run and reported. If Darrell J. Baker's operation and the Barnes and Thornburg operation were one coordinated group, they would share clients. Every employer in all 2,096 Delaware lobbying registrations was checked. There is not one shared employer between Darrell J. Baker's ten clients and the client books of Thomas McGonigle, Shawn P. Tucker, Douglas Gramiak and James Smith Junior. Zero overlap.

That is the finding, and it is not the one people expect. Delaware's paid lobbying corps is 618 people representing 869 employers, and a handful of them hold every file that touches this waterfront. Nobody has to coordinate when the same six people represent everyone.

Every side of the Edgemoor fight, the marina the State is buying, the Boxwood Road warehouse, the Dover hydrogen plant, the Southbridge development, and the union that lost its holiday work is represented in Dover by one of about six people, several of whom worked in the Governor's office first. The State sits on one side of these deals, and its own former staff sits on the other, and they bill from the same handful of addresses.

"Thomas McGonigle was Jack Markell's chief of staff. Douglas Gramiak was

John Carney's chief of staff. Shawn P. Tucker ran New Castle County's Land Use Department and rewrote its zoning code. James Smith Junior drafted that code and carried it to County Council. All four now lobby the governments they used to run,

and the State of Delaware pays their firm $13,719,480.19."

Philadelphia Pike

Alex Meitzler filed his traffic studies on 413 acres of Philadelphia Pike. Fifty-eight more acres on the same road were doing something else.

On March 28, 2022, the Council on Development Finance approved $1,000,000 from the Site Readiness Fund to Drawbridge Claymont, LLC for fifty-eight acres at 6300 Philadelphia Pike.

On April 29, 2024, Drawbridge Claymont, LLC put $30,000 into Change Can't Wait PAC, filed from 34 East Germantown Pike in Norristown, Pennsylvania.

On September 5, 2024, Keith Delaney put $15,000 into the same committee, filed from 190 West Germantown Pike in East Norriton. He had given $1,200 to Meyer for Delaware on December 23, 2022, from Isle of Palms, South Carolina, and reaches $31,200 across three.

On October 2, 2024, Keith Delaney put in $15,000 more, and this time he filed it from 6300 Philadelphia Pike, Claymont, Delaware. The parcel itself.

On May 12, 2026, nineteen months after the election, with nothing on the ballot, Drawbridge Claymont, LLC sent $25,000 more.

"$1,000,000 of public money went onto fifty-eight acres of Philadelphia Pike in 2022. $85,000 came back off those acres and into a political action committee across

2024 and 2026, and the last check was written a year and a half

after the election was over."

The two largest checks

Michael R. Bloomberg gave $250,000 to Change Can't Wait PAC on September 4, 2024, six days before the primary, out of a post office box in New York. The day before it landed, the committee was down to about $38,000, having spent more than $1,000,000 on advertising. It is the largest single check any committee in this network has ever taken in.

TransPerfect Translations International, the company run by Phil Shawe, gave $1,300,000. Five checks to Citizens for a New Delaware Way, all of them filed from 1250 Broadway in New York under the company's name. $250,000 on June 13, 2024. $250,000 on June 20, 2024. $500,000 on August 8, 2024. $250,000 on August 23, 2024. And $50,000 on November 18, 2025, a full year after the election had been decided. Phil Shawe announced the effort publicly in July 2024 as $1,000,000. The filings show $300,000 more than he announced, and his own name is on none of it.

Darrell J. Baker Esquire, PA, the registered lobbyist and registered agent for Summit North Marina, gave $1,200 on October 7, 2024, from 1601 Concord Pike, Suite 100 in Wilmington. Twenty-three days later, Leo Holt gave the same amount. On October 30, 2024, Leo Holt, the president of Holt Logistics Corporation, gave $1,200 from 101 South King Street in Gloucester City, New Jersey. The maximum, and not a dollar over, because $1,200 was everything the law would let him hand the candidate.

"Michael R. Bloomberg gave $250,000. TransPerfect gave $1,300,000. Leo Holt gave $1,200. Two of them were buying an election. The third was buying a phone call."

What the arithmetic says

Two hundred ninety-one contributions come from the households named above. $2,354,271.82.

$142,371.82 of it went into the candidate accounts, where 15 Del. C. section 8010 set a $1,200 ceiling, and the Delaware Department of Elections printed every name.

$2,211,900 went into the political action committees, where the law set nothing.

"Ninety-four cents of every dollar from the households named above

went where the law does not look."

It did not all go to one place. These households wrote to four different committees. $32,500 to Meyer for New Castle County. $109,871.82 to Meyer for Delaware. $911,900 to Change Cant Wait PAC. And $1,300,000 to Citizens for a New Delaware Way, every dollar of it from TransPerfect Translations International.

Meyer for New Castle County opened at zero in February 2016 and closed at zero in December 2021, and on the last day of its life, December 31, 2021, it transferred $34,480.58 into Meyer for Delaware. Meyer for Delaware has taken in $3,377,113.84 in contributions and another $580,000 in loans and debts, and has spent $2,803,602.30. Every dollar of the $580,000 was repaid in 2025, the first year of the term. Change Can't Wait PAC has taken in $2,019,799.02 across fourteen reports, from the day it opened on June 17, 2021, through the 30-day report its treasurer filed on August 17, 2026, and it has spent $1,618,138.87 across 387 itemized lines. No in-kind contributions, no loans, no debts. Schedule A is the whole of it. It sent $500,000 to Targeted Platform Media LLC and $139,436.99 to Devine Mulvey Longabaugh, the Washington firm whose named partner, Julian Mulvey, speaks for the committee. And between August 15 and September 4, 2024, in seven transfers over twenty days, it pushed $762,060.64 into its own Third-Party Advertiser at Post Office Box 54 in Wilmington, where the donors never have to be listed again.

Citizens for a New Delaware Way did the same thing with the TransPerfect money, running $1,268,567.72 through its Third-Party Advertiser, which opened every reporting period at zero, spent every dollar it took in, and closed at zero. Ten filings. Ten times.

Across all five committees, from February 2016 through August 2026, the network reports receipts of $8,530,295.89. Of that, $1,268,567.72 is money Citizens for a New Delaware Way moved into its own Third-Party Advertiser in nine transfers between July 18 and August 30, 2024, so it is counted twice, once going in and once moving over. Strip the transfer out, and the network raised $7,261,728.17 from outside itself.

None of this is a loophole somebody found. It is the design. Delaware wrote a hard limit on the money you can see and no limit at all on the money you cannot, and then published the small numbers beautifully.

Leo Holt gave $1,200. Michael R. Bloomberg gave $250,000. Both of them followed the law exactly.

VII. One Year Later, Same Month, Same Room

The checks moved on a Tuesday, a Wednesday, and a Thursday at the end of October 2024, in the days after a federal judge vacated the Edgemoor permits and in the days before Delaware elected a Governor.

Twelve months on, almost to the week, the people who decide how much money Delaware is allowed to spend sat down at Buena Vista. October 20, 2025. Twenty-nine members present, three absent, eighty others in the room. Alan Levin in the chair, gavel down at 12:01 p.m.

They heard Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics on the national outlook. They adopted a Fiscal Year 2026 expenditure estimate of $7,250.0 million against a revenue estimate of $6,684.1 million, an operating balance of negative $565.9 million. They discussed the federal tax bill’s effect on corporate collections, a state chartered bank merging into a national bank, flat growth in lottery slots, the Elon Musk case, and toll increases that had taken effect on August 15 on Route 1, Interstate 95 and U.S. 301.

They did not discuss the Port of Wilmington. The word does not appear in the minutes.

One member did raise something. Michael Houghton, who had chaired that council for eight years, looked at the flat Corporate Franchise Tax forecast and said that line, together with the Unclaimed Property cap, should be areas looked at if Delaware kept projecting deficits.

Unclaimed property is the fund that sent nearly $200 million to the Diamond State Port Corporation in January 2025, days after the inauguration. It is the fund House Bill 500 opened by another sixty million dollars.

Five months after he said it, at the March 16, 2026 meeting, Michael Houghton asked a follow-up question about the same corporate revenue lines. Two days after that, on March 18, 2026, an email from Governor Matt Meyer’s office removed him from the council. Three and a half months after that, House Bill 500 raised the escheat ceiling and sent $30 million to a marina at 3000 Summit Harbour Place in Bear.

In October 2024, the money moved in three days. In October 2025, Michael Houghton, the only man in that room who named the unclaimed property fund out loud, was still sitting at the table. By March 18, 2026, Governor Matt Meyer had removed him by email.

VIII. The Room Where The Number Is Set

There is a body in Delaware that decides how much money the state is allowed to spend. Most people have never heard of it. Its full name is the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council, known inside government by the acronym DEFAC, and its number is not a suggestion. DEFAC is a panel of roughly thirty appointed members, drawn from business, banking, accounting, labor, academia, and the General Assembly, that meets several times a year and votes to adopt one official set of numbers: how much revenue the State of Delaware will collect, and how much it will spend. Nobody elects them. Every one of them is appointed by the Governor and serves only as long as the Governor wants them there. What they vote on is not advice. It is the ceiling.

Here is the reach of it. Article VIII, section 6(b) of the Delaware Constitution says no appropriation may push General Fund appropriations past 98 percent of estimated General Fund revenue. DEFAC produces that estimate, so DEFAC decides, in practice, the maximum size of the entire state budget. A separate rule in force since 1991 caps new tax-supported debt authorization at 5 percent of that same estimate, which means DEFAC’s number also sets the outer wall of the Bond Bill, the annual capital spending law that builds schools, roads, parks and ports. And unclaimed property, the escheat pot that paid for the port and the marina, is one of the individual revenue lines DEFAC votes on. Raise DEFAC’s number, and Delaware may spend more and borrow more.

Lower it and Delaware may not. There is no appeal from it, no public vote on it, and no requirement that anyone outside the room be told how it was reached.

And DEFAC has never been written into the Delaware Code. There is no statute creating it. It exists only because a Governor signed an executive order saying it exists, and the current one, Executive Order Number 62, was signed by Governor John Carney on August 27, 2024. Members serve, in the language of that order, during the Governor’s pleasure. The Governor designates the chair from among them. The Governor may remove any of them, at any time, for any reason or none, and does not have to say why.

In 2025, Governor Matt Meyer removed Michael Houghton, the Wilmington attorney who had chaired DEFAC for eight years, and installed Alan B. Levin, who had never served a single day on the council. Levin had given Governor Meyer’s political committees seven times since 2016, thirty-two thousand nine hundred dollars in all, including twenty thousand dollars to Change Can’t Wait PAC on June 10, 2024, the political action committee Levin himself organized and raised for. Alan Levin is also a former Chairman of the Diamond State Port Corporation Board, the state body that owns the Port of Wilmington, appointed to that chairmanship by Governor Jack Markell in 2009 at the same time Markell made him Director of the Delaware Economic Development Office.

Alan Levin once chaired the board that runs the Port of Wilmington. Alan Levin now chairs the council that decides what Delaware can afford to spend on it. In between, Alan Levin raised the money for Matt Meyer, the Governor who appointed him.

Who Alan Levin Is, Since Almost Nobody In Delaware Could Tell You

Alan B. Levin has never been elected to anything and has never been confirmed to the chairmanship he now holds. He casts no vote. He signs nothing.

His father, Harry Levin, started Happy Harry’s with one drugstore in Wilmington. Alan Levin, a Concord High School graduate with a political science degree from Tulane University and a law degree from Delaware Law School at Widener University, ran it as President and Chief Executive Officer and grew revenues tenfold to nearly half a billion dollars, seventy-six stores across Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, two thousand seven hundred employees, and sixty-five percent of the Delaware market, until the Walgreen Company bought it in July 2006.

Alan Levin had been in government long before that. Levin served as a deputy attorney general in the Delaware Department of Justice under Attorney General Richard Gebelein, and as executive assistant and counsel to United States Senator William V. Roth Junior. He chaired Delaware’s Private Industry Council from 1992 to 1997. He chaired the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, the industry’s Washington lobbying organization, in 2001. He chaired the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce in 2005, where he lobbied successfully to cut Delaware’s gross receipts tax.

Alan Levin was involved in numerous civic and corporate activities throughout the U.S. Most notably, in 2001, he completed a term as Chairman of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, a Washington, D.C.- based organization which directs lobbying and professional activities for the industry. Mr. Levin is a past member of the Board of Directors of the United States Chamber of Commerce, a former Chairman of the Board of the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce, and a member of the boards of Wesley College and the American Red Cross of Delmarva. He served as an advisory board member of the Delaware State University School of Business and the University of Delaware's Lerner College of Business and Economics.

After the Walgreens sale, Alan Levin became founding partner of Innovation Capital Partners, a growth equity venture capital firm, and sat on the board of directors of A. Duie Pyle, the trucking and logistics company.

In December 2008, Governor-elect Jack Markell named Alan Levin Director of the Delaware Economic Development Office, a cabinet-level post, and made him Chairman of the Diamond State Port Corporation Board in the same season. In those two chairs he pushed the first attempt to privatize the Port of Wilmington, a fifty-year lease to the Houston energy transport company Kinder Morgan carrying two hundred and half a million dollars of investment.

The longshoremen of the International Longshoremen’s Association understood what an energy terminal would mean for a banana port, and they fought it. The General Assembly passed oversight legislation. In March 2013, Kinder Morgan walked away, its president citing an impossible position created by union opposition. The lease died. The model did not. The Gulftainer concession of 2018 and the Enstructure concession running the port today are both built on the public-private template Alan Levin advanced in 2012 and 2013.

In 2015, Alan Levin was Of Counsel at Drinker Biddle and reportedly served as Director of Business Development with Firm Partner Gregory Sawyer, former Deputy Chief of Staff for Markell; Tom McGonigle; and Shawn Tucker.

After leaving DEDO in April 2015, Levin became Senior Advisor at SoDel Concepts, the Sussex County restaurant group, a role he holds to this day. He also served on the Beebe Medical Foundation Board of Directors and SoDel Cares.

Phase 1: The "Quarterback" (Government Service) During his time as DEDO Director, Levin was not just a passive approver; he was instrumental in establishing the "template" for Amazon's expansion in Delaware.

Middletown Expansion: Levin served as Director during the critical period when Amazon established its first major foothold in Middletown.

Incentive Management: He publicly confirmed and managed the state incentive applications that made these deals financially viable for Amazon.

Policy Shift: Under his leadership, the state shifted toward a logistics-heavy economic strategy, specifically targeting "big-box distribution users" like Amazon to replace lost manufacturing jobs.

Phase 2: The "Shield" (Private Practice) After Levin joined Drinker Biddle & Reath (which merged to become Faegre Drinker in 2020), the firm served as a key legal shield for Amazon.

Liability Defense: The firm's Philadelphia office (Drinker Biddle's historical headquarters) has represented Amazon in successfully dismissing product liability lawsuits. For example, partners from the Philadelphia office successfully defended Amazon in Wallace v. Tri-State Assembly LLC (2021) and other cases regarding third-party seller liability.

Revolving Door of Policy: The firm maintains a "revolving door" with Amazon's own corporate structure. Former Faegre Drinker attorneys have left the firm to join Amazon's internal Public Policy team, creating a tight network between the firm's lobbyists and the tech giant's internal regulators.

Lobbying Power: The firm is recognized as a "Top-Performing Lobbying Firm," leveraging the kind of government connections Levin possesses to advocate for corporate clients.

The optic is one of sustained mutual benefit:

Levin used his public office to create a favorable business environment for Amazon in Delaware.

Amazon subsequently became a major client of the law firm (Drinker Biddle) that hired Levin as a senior advisor and "Of Counsel" immediately after he left office.

In October 2019, Matt Meyer, then County Executive of New Castle County, put Levin in charge of a twelve-person task force studying the future of the Wilmington and New Castle County Airport. The task force recommended against renewing the county’s thirty-year lease with the Delaware River and Bay Authority. The Delaware River and Bay Authority has confirmed that Amazon expressed interest in making that airport an air hub.

Four Meetings. Eighty Pages. The Port Is Not In Them.

The council met four times in the fiscal year that built House Bill 500. October 20, 2025. December 15, 2025. March 16, 2026. May 18, 2026. Alan Levin gaveled all four. The official minutes of all four, with every forecast table attached, were read line by line. Roughly eighty pages of adopted motions, revenue worksheets, expenditure forecasts, appropriation limits, and Transportation Trust Fund tables.

The Port of Wilmington does not appear in any of them. Not once, across four meetings. The Diamond State Port Corporation does not appear. Edgemoor does not appear. The Delaware Container Terminal does not appear. Dredging does not appear. Summit North Marina does not appear, and neither does any other marina.

The word Wilmington appears three times across all four sets of minutes. All three are in the March meeting, and all three concern a Division of Motor Vehicles office that closed. The only appearance of the word Diamond is in the May minutes, where Secretary Young reports declining enrollment in the Diamond State Health Plan.

Thomas McGonigle, the registered lobbyist for the Diamond State Port Corporation, is listed in the Others Present block of the May 18, 2026 minutes. The corporation he is registered to lobby for is not named anywhere in the minutes of the meeting he attended.

The council that sets the constitutional ceiling on Delaware spending met four times in the fiscal year the port received one hundred ten million dollars, and the marina received thirty million. It discussed the price of oil, the Strait of Hormuz, the effect of snowfall on slot machine play, and a shuttered motor vehicle office. Across four meetings and eighty pages it never once said the word port.

The Gavel Times, Which Are Arithmetic Rather Than Argument

October 20, 2025 was called to order at 12:01 p.m. and adjourned at 3 p.m., one hundred seventy-nine minutes. December 15, 2025 ran from 1:00 p.m. to 2:47 p.m., one hundred seven minutes. March 16, 2026 ran from 1:00 p.m. to 2:27 p.m., eighty-seven minutes. May 18, 2026 ran from 1:01 p.m. to 2:16 p.m., seventy-five minutes.

Under one chairman, across one fiscal year, the meetings of the council that sets Delaware’s spending ceiling grew fifty-eight percent shorter. The numbers moving through the room got larger every time.

And Nobody Stood Up To Object Until The Last One

Public comment is the closing item on every DEFAC agenda. The October minutes record that no member of the public signed up. The December minutes record the same. The March minutes record the same. On May 18, 2026, one person signed up, and it was Rick Geisenberger, the former Secretary of Finance.

Three consecutive meetings of the council that certifies Delaware’s revenue, and not one citizen at the microphone. The first person to stand up was a former Secretary of Finance, and he did it six weeks before the bond bill passed.

Who Else Was At That Table On May 18, 2026

The official minutes of that meeting, approved and issued May 27, 2026, name everyone recorded in attendance. The minutes do not distinguish who was physically at Buena Vista from who joined by video, and no Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council minutes do. Read the roll against the campaign finance filings.

Chairman Alan B. Levin called the meeting to order at 1:01 p.m. and adjourned it at 2:16 p.m. His first act of business was to seat two new members, one of whom filled the chair of Michael Houghton, the former chairman Governor Matt Meyer had removed in March.

Philip Reese, a retired banker and former chairman of Delaware’s pension board, sits on DEFAC; Philip Reese gave Change Can’t Wait PAC one hundred thousand dollars on August 9, 2024, twenty-two days before the Democratic primary, and one hundred seven thousand nine hundred dollars to Governor Meyer’s political network in all.

Gerald “Guy” Marcozzi sits on DEFAC and was recorded absent that day; Marcozzi gave the same political action committee seven thousand eight hundred dollars across three contributions.

Secretary of State Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez sits on DEFAC and chairs the Diamond State Port Corporation Board; she personally presented the corporate franchise revenue data that afternoon and, per the minutes, emphasized the importance of accurate data, and her Wilmington household gave Governor Meyer’s network seven thousand one hundred ninety-nine dollars and ninety-two cents across four names.

And Thomas McGonigle appears in the Others Present block of those minutes. Thomas McGonigle is a partner at the law firm Barnes and Thornburg LLP at 222 Delaware Avenue, Suite 1200 in Wilmington, the registered Delaware lobbyist for the Diamond State Port Corporation since November 1, 2019, the former chief of staff to Governor Jack Markell and the former chief legal counsel and policy director to Governor Thomas Carper. On October 5, 2024, Thomas McGonigle gave Governor Meyer’s campaign one thousand two hundred dollars, and on October 29, 2024, his wife Patricia McGonigle gave one thousand two hundred dollars from the same address at 1305 Shipley Road, Apartment A.

Alan Levin, chairman of the council that certifies Delaware’s revenue, raised the money for Governor Matt Meyer’s political action committee. Philip Reese, a member of that council, gave that same committee one hundred thousand dollars. Secretary of State Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez, another member of that council, chairs the Diamond State Port Corporation, which received one hundred ten million dollars. And Thomas McGonigle, the port corporation’s paid lobbyist, is on the attendance list. That is not a hearing. It is the same people, seated differently.

What That Meeting Adopted

The Balance and Appropriations Worksheet approved by motion on May 18, 2026, set the 98 percent appropriation limit at $7,328.0 million, an increase of $196.0 million from the March meeting and $595.0 million since October 2025. It also adopted a separate figure: $243.4 million in extraordinary revenues available for the Budget Stabilization Fund or for non-recurring expenditures.

Six weeks later, House Bill 500 committed $110 million to the port, $30 million to the marina, and $35 million to a Legislative Hall expansion the Governor then struck. One hundred seventy-five million dollars of non-recurring spending, against a $243.4 million pot the council had voted into existence under Levin’s gavel before the bill was written.

And the unclaimed property line itself did not move at all. In the adopted worksheet, it reads 554.0 in March and 554.0 in May, in both forecast years, with a change of zero. It is the only major revenue category in the entire document that moved by nothing. Personal income tax moved $91.4 million. Corporation income tax moved $29.7 million.

Delaware did not forecast more escheat money. Delaware legislated more access to it. Delaware law caps how much unclaimed property revenue the State may move into its General Fund each year, and that cap stood at five hundred fifty-four million dollars. House Bill 500 raised it to six hundred fourteen million dollars, an increase of sixty million, and the increase was carried inside the capital spending bill rather than debated as a tax measure of its own. The Governor’s January budget had proposed exactly that sixty million as a revenue enhancement, described in the budget documents as increasing the amount of abandoned property and escheat revenue available for budget use, and the enhancement was needed because the State was facing a five hundred twelve million dollar baseline deficit going into Fiscal Year 2027. Sixty million dollars above what the State’s own council said the State would collect.

VIII-A. The Man With No Title

Alan Levin has never been elected to anything. For eighteen years, he has been standing where Delaware decides who gets what.

A Promise Made Inside An Empty Factory

On the morning of October 27, 2009, Vice President Joe Biden walked into a shuttered automobile plant on Boxwood Road, near Newport, Delaware, and told a room full of laid-off autoworkers that they were going to get their jobs back.

General Motors had built cars in that building since 1947. Five thousand people had worked there at the peak. Eight and a half million vehicles had come off those lines. It had closed three months earlier, after sixty-two years, and the men and women standing in front of the Vice President that morning had spent the summer figuring out what a person does at forty-eight when the plant closes.

Biden lives three miles away, in Greenville. He had come to announce that the United States Department of Energy would lend more than half a billion dollars to a California startup called Fisker Automotive, which wanted to build plug-in hybrid sports cars in that building. Governor Jack Markell stood beside him. This is seed money, Biden said, that will return back to the American consumer in billions and billions and billions of dollars in good new jobs. The loan, he told them, would let some of the best workers in the world reclaim their jobs.

Six months later, in April 2010, Governor Markell’s administration put in $22 million of Delaware’s own money, a state loan and a state grant together. Contemporary accounts in 2014 put the state’s exposure at $20 million and at more than $21 million; the $22 million figure comes from Karl Baker’s 2023 reconstruction, which had the benefit of the full bankruptcy record. Fisker promised two thousand factory jobs and three thousand more up and down the supply chain.

Not one car was ever built in that building. Not one Delaware worker was ever hired to build one.

What stands on that ground today is an Amazon warehouse, the largest building the company operates in this state. How it got from one to the other runs through a small number of Delawareans who have known each other a long time, and through one man in particular who has never held elected office in his life.

The Man In Two Chairs

Alan B. Levin does not vote on anything. He does not sign laws. He has never stood for election. Walk down Market Street in Wilmington and ask ten people who he is, and you will get ten blank looks, and that is not shyness. It is the shape of the career.

His father, Harry, opened Happy Harry’s with a single drugstore. Alan took it and made it enormous. Seventy-six stores across four states, two thousand seven hundred employees, revenues climbing toward half a billion dollars, roughly two of every three prescriptions filled in Delaware. By the end it was the tenth largest drugstore chain in America. Walgreens bought it in July 2006, and the sale made him rich enough that he never again had to want anything from anyone.

He had been in and out of government the whole time. He prosecuted as a deputy attorney general under Delaware Attorney General Richard Gebelein. He staffed United States Senator William Roth as his executive assistant and counsel. He ran Delaware’s Private Industry Council through the nineties. In 2001, he chaired the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, which his own official biography describes, without embarrassment, as the organization that directs lobbying for the industry. He sat on the national board of the United States Chamber of Commerce. In 2005, he chaired Delaware’s Chamber and got the gross receipts tax cut. Somewhere in there, he collected the Delaware Distinguished Service Medal for helping the families of Guard and Reserve members deployed to Desert Storm and Iraq, and board seats at Wesley College and the Red Cross of Delmarva, and advisory seats at Delaware State University’s business school and the University of Delaware’s Lerner College.

After Walgreens, he started a venture fund, Innovation Capital Partners, and put money into a spectroscopy company called Centice and a hiring-reference company called Skill Survey. And he took a seat on the board of A. Duie Pyle.

A. Duie Pyle hauls freight and runs warehouses. Before Alan Levin ran the state agency that hands companies public money to build here, before he chaired the corporation that owns the Port of Wilmington, and before he came to chair the council that decides what Delaware can afford to spend on a container terminal, he sat on the board of a trucking company.

In December 2008, the incoming governor, Jack Markell, gave him two jobs at once.

The first was Director of the Delaware Economic Development Office, a cabinet post, the agency that decides which private companies receive state money to build in Delaware. The second was Chairman of the Board of the Diamond State Port Corporation, the state-owned company that owns the Port of Wilmington.

One man. The office that gives out the money, and the board that owns the port. Nobody voted for him for either.

How Things Reached His Desk

In the summer of 2023, a reporter named Karl Baker published three stories in Delaware Online and The News Journal about what a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden showed about business in Delaware. Most of the country had spent three years arguing about that laptop and about foreign money. Almost nobody had looked at what it said about Wilmington.

What it showed was a state clawing out of a recession and paying almost anyone who promised a job.

On February 3, 2010, a California political donor named Wade Randlett, who had worked on the Obama transition and ran a company called Next Fuels, emailed Governor Jack Markell directly. Randlett wanted to put solar panels and other alternative energy equipment at the Delaware City refinery. He opened by mentioning that he and the Governor had a mutual friend. The friend was Hunter Biden.

Markell answered from a private email account he kept under a false name. The name was Alan Jackson. Delaware reporters would find that out in 2015.

Markell handed Randlett to Alan Levin.

Ten weeks later, on April 20, 2010, Levin wrote an email introducing Randlett to another possible partner for the refinery project. In it, he explained where Randlett had come from. Randlett, he wrote, came to us at DEDO through the Vice President’s Office.

Reading the underlying emails thirteen years later, The News Journal called that a seemingly inaccurate statement.

Karl Baker asked Alan Levin about it in 2023. Levin answered by email, and he did not deny writing it. He talked first about the economy, about how Delaware was coming out of the worst recession since the Great Depression. Then he explained himself.

If the mention of the VP’s Office in the email was authentic, it was probably an effort by me to add credibility to the venture again because I wanted as many jobs created as possible. Alan Levin, who ran Delaware’s economic development office from 2009 to 2015.

He added that nobody ever pressured his office to favor companies connected to the Bidens.

Randlett was not the only one. A staffer inside Levin’s agency put it in writing that they would pull out the stops for two more companies Hunter Biden had brought around, an Israeli air conditioning maker called DuCool and a water technology outfit called Aqua Sciences.

And ten miles west of the Boxwood plant, at the old Chrysler factory in Newark that the University of Delaware was turning into a research campus, a Rosemont Seneca employee named Michael Muldoon was drafting a sales pitch. His firm, he wrote, was working closely with a team at the University of Delaware, in coordination with businesses and the State government, to help find clean tech companies to fill a technology park at the site of an old Chrysler plant. He called the university one of Rosemont Seneca’s strategic partners.

He sent the draft to Hunter Biden in November 2010 with a note. He had made it for $15,000 for introductions. Let me know if that sounds good, Muldoon wrote, and I’ll get it out the door.

Hunter Biden had one question. Would it include success fees and equity.

It would, Muldoon answered. He added the equity and percentage pieces project by project.

Fifteen thousand dollars to be introduced to a state university and a state government, with equity negotiated case by case.

The refinery project died in the end, killed by senior management at PBF Energy, the private equity firm that had bought the Delaware City refinery. Nobody got anything. But for about a year the State of Delaware worked hard for it, and Alan Levin worked hardest.

Twenty-Two Million Dollars and a Building Full of Nothing

Fisker Automotive was the big one, and Hunter Biden’s own firm was in it early.

It’s our fund that’s in the deal, he wrote in December 2010 to a Philadelphia money manager named Wayne Kimmel, an old friend from Kimmel’s days at ETF Venture Funds. Cool company, right.

In May of that year, Fisker had trucked its luxury sedan, the Karma, to a Jaguar dealership in Wilmington and unveiled it to a crowd. The next month, a bankruptcy judge signed off on Fisker buying the Boxwood plant. Weeks after that, an investment banker named Barry Yerger, of Barley Mill Asset Management, emailed Hunter Biden with sincere thanks for any and all help provided concerning Fisker, particularly the introduction to Kimmel, and added his congratulations to all on the finalization of the Boxwood Plant transfer. Yerger would not talk to Karl Baker in 2023, and so nobody knows who all he was congratulating, or for what.

Then it fell apart in the ordinary way. Fisker missed its production milestones. The Department of Energy shut off the loan. The battery supplier went bankrupt in 2012. By spring of 2013, Fisker could not make a $10 million payment. In November, it filed.

Hunter Biden was listed personally among the creditors, along with three investment funds bearing the Rosemont name at addresses matching Rosemont Seneca Partners. Delaware taxpayers stood third in line, behind the federal government and Silicon Valley Bank, and got back essentially nothing of the $22 million.

Also in the wreckage was Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, the Silicon Valley venture firm whose managing partner Raymond Lane had been chairman of Fisker’s board. Al Gore was a senior partner at Kleiner Perkins then. So was John Doerr, a major Democratic donor who sat on President Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board while the administration was steering some $90 billion into clean energy.

Four years later Henrik Fisker, who founded the company, blamed the battery supplier and his own failure to raise more money. If we would have got the money, he told The News Journal in 2017, we would have been in Delaware today as the original company.

Delaware put twenty-two million dollars of public money into a company that never built a car here and never hired a worker here, and then stood third in line to get it back.

Two Chinese Companies And A Rigged Auction

What happened to the wreckage is worth following, because it explains who owned the building when New Castle County came knocking.

In October 2013, one month before Fisker filed, the federal government auctioned off the $169 million Fisker still owed on its federal loan. Exactly one bidder showed up. A Delaware limited liability company called Hybrid Technology, controlled by the Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li, bid $25 million for the whole thing, and won.

Federal investigators would later conclude that Li’s company had rigged that auction and cost American taxpayers millions. Hybrid Technology paid the government %29 million in 2020 to make the claims go away.

The hard assets went separately. On March 24, 2014, Wanxiang America, the American arm of what was then China’s largest auto parts manufacturer, bought them for $149 million. The Boxwood plant came along inside that sale. Fisker had told the Department of Energy the year before that the property was worth $40 million.

And according to Alan Levin, somewhere in there Hunter Biden telephoned Governor Markell to connect him with Chinese investors interested in the plant. Markell’s people arranged a tour. Hunter Biden canceled it. Levin said nobody ever told him the investors’ names.

Jessica Tillipman, who teaches government contracts law at George Washington University and serves as its assistant dean for procurement law studies, read the record for Karl Baker. She called it ugly, said it did not appear to break any law, and said it carried the appearance of favoritism. Most people in politics who care about ethics, Tillipman said, take pains to avoid this situation.

The County Tries To Buy It Back

Tom Gordon had been County Executive of New Castle County before, and by 2014 he was back. He is not a subtle man, and he did not have a subtle idea.

He wanted the county to buy that plant. Not to sit on it. He wanted to turn the old General Motors factory into a distribution hub tied to an expanded Port of Wilmington, so that ships coming into Wilmington would unload into a warehouse the county owned, on land the county controlled, employing people the county could count.

He gave the job to his second in command, Chief Administrative Officer David Grimaldi.

On June 3, 2014, two News Journal reporters, Adam Taylor and Aaron Nathans, put the plan in the paper. New Castle County was offering $9 million. When Karl Baker went back through the record nine years later, the figure he found for what Tom Gordon proposed was $9.9 million. The number announced was $9 million. The number that reached Wanxiang was $9.9 million.

Gordon told them exactly what he was thinking. I would like to buy it and make something happen there, he said. We want some sort of manufacturing, because we have too many big-box stores here. We need real jobs that pay real money.

Grimaldi told them that if the county could restore local control to the site and then work with the state, the property could be economically successful again.

Another council member, Penrose Hollins, told the reporters he had never heard about any of it. Hollins pointed out the obvious problem. Landing a real employer takes state money, and the state has it. DEDO has all the bucks, he said.

And then Taylor and Nathans called the Delaware Economic Development Office, and Alan Levin gave them a sentence.

Alan Levin said he was not aware of any credible offers to buy the site.

New Castle County’s $9 million was the headline of the story his quote ran in.

Levin went on. He said state officials and Senator Tom Carper’s office were talking with Wanxiang about what to do with the property. He wrote in an email that "Wanxiang was still performing their due diligence and deciding what use of Boxwood would be in their corporate best interest".

The reporters also called Roger Brown, the interim president of the reconstituted Fisker Automotive, which still had its name on the operation. Brown told them something that did not match at all. "There’s so many people who came to us", he said, saying, 'I’ll buy the property', this and that, yada yada yada." He explained how it works in his trade. "None of them tell you it’s not for sale", Brown said. "They always tell you, make an offer. That’s just the natural instinct of a real estate guy."

The state’s economic development director said there were no credible offers. The man sitting on the property told the same two reporters that people would not stop trying to buy it. Both quotes ran in the same newspaper on the same day.

What Alan Levin Did That Was Not In The Paper

That same month, David Grimaldi told Alan Levin what New Castle County intended to do.

Levin wrote back and told him to stand down. He strongly urged the county, in his words, to wait until Wanxiang determined its interest.

Grimaldi did not wait. He answered that the county and the state would have to agree to disagree. We will send the offer letter out to Wanxiang momentarily, he told Levin, as there doesn’t seem to be a need for a meeting.

Then he did the work. The county hired a well-known land use lawyer to draft a purchase agreement. Grimaldi got on a plane to Chicago and walked into Wanxiang America’s office and pitched them himself. They listened. They were interested.

He flew home feeling good about it.

"But when I got back, I got a strange email from them that said You guys in Delaware need to speak with one voice. It seems that there was somebody at the state who was pushing back on our transaction." David Grimaldi, Chief Administrative Officer of New Castle County.

Grimaldi would not name the somebody at the state. He did not have to. Two weeks earlier, Alan Levin had told a newspaper there were no credible offers on a day when New Castle County’s offer was the headline, and in that same month, Alan Levin had written to Grimaldi telling the county to sit down and wait.

Those emails came out later, through an open records request. Nobody was looking at them at the time.

New Castle County never bought the plant.

Meanwhile, At The Port

While all of that was happening on Boxwood Road, Alan Levin was also chairing the board that owns the Port of Wilmington, and he was trying to lease it away for fifty years.

The company was Kinder Morgan, out of Houston, which moves energy for a living. The offer was two hundred and a half million dollars of investment in exchange for half a century of control.

The longshoremen of Local 1694 did the arithmetic that anybody on that dock could do. Kinder Morgan is an energy company.

Wilmington is a fruit port. Bananas and petroleum coke do not share a berth. They fought it in public, loudly, and the General Assembly passed a law to slow the whole thing down.

In March 2013, Kinder Morgan quit, and it put its reasons in a letter. The letter was addressed to Alan Levin, by name, as Chairman of the Diamond State Port Corporation. Kinder Morgan’s Schlosser wrote that the company has choices in terms of where it will invest substantial resources, and that the current union leadership at your facility does not make Delaware a good choice at this time.

Your facility. The letter that killed the first privatization of the Port of Wilmington went to one man, and that man held both the state office that wanted the deal and the chairmanship of the public corporation sitting across the table from it.

State Representative John Kowalko of Newark said afterward that Delaware ought to just invest in the thing itself, something in the neighborhood of a hundred fifty million dollars over fifteen years, and keep it public. Nobody did that.

The first time, they tried it where people could see, and the people beat them. Everything after happened somewhere else.

What He Built Instead

Amazon opened the first fulfillment center in its entire network in New Castle, Delaware, in 1997. Its second Delaware building is the one that matters here.

On June 29, 2012, with Alan Levin running Delaware’s economic development office, Amazon announced a million square feet in Middletown, ninety million dollars, more than eight hundred fifty full-time jobs. Four weeks later, Levin himself announced that Delaware’s Council on Development Finance had recommended a Strategic Fund grant for another company. That is how the office worked, and it is worth noticing. When state money went out the door, the Director’s name went out with it.

Levin was not a clerk approving Amazon’s paperwork. He built the pattern. Under him, the agency turned Delaware’s economic strategy toward logistics and big-box distribution, aiming squarely at companies like Amazon to replace the manufacturing that had left.

So consider what Tom Gordon was actually up against in June 2014 when he said Delaware had too many big-box stores and needed real jobs that pay real money. The office that told him there were no credible offers on Boxwood Road was, in those same years, rebuilding the state’s entire economy around big-box distribution.

Everybody Goes to the Same Law Firm

On April 30, 2015, Governor Markell’s office announced that Alan Levin was leaving at the end of the legislative session. His last day was June 30. The announcement listed the companies that had come to Delaware or grown here on his watch, and Amazon is the first name on the list. His deputy, Bernice Whaley, was confirmed to replace him.

He went to two places, and the first one had been filling up with Delaware government for years.

Drinker Biddle and Reath had an office in Wilmington at 222 Delaware Avenue. Levin arrived as Of Counsel and as the firm’s director of business development.

He was in the company. Thomas McGonigle had been Governor Markell’s chief of staff since 2009, and before that managing partner of Wolf Block’s Wilmington office, and before that chief legal counsel and policy director to Governor Tom Carper, and before that a deputy attorney general. Markell announced on November 15, 2012, that McGonigle was leaving for Drinker Biddle. He went on to run the firm’s Wilmington office.

Geoffrey Sawyer had been Markell’s deputy chief of staff, and in the firm’s own description of him, he directed economic development efforts for the state and oversaw Delaware’s collective bargaining.

Joseph Schoell had been chief legal counsel to Governor Ruth Ann Minner. Mary Kate McLaughlin had been chief of staff at the Delaware Department of Education. Gregory Patterson had been Markell’s legislative liaison and then deputy chief of staff, and at Drinker Biddle he became senior government relations director in Delaware with clients including St. Francis Hospital and AstraZeneca. Douglas Gramiak, who had been chief of staff to Governor John Carney, came last.

A chief of staff to one governor. A deputy chief of staff to the same one. A chief legal counsel to another. A chief of staff to a third. The state’s economic development director, who was also the port chairman. One firm, one city, one decade.

Drinker Biddle merged in 2020 and became Faegre Drinker. In June 2021, McGonigle took eight people two floors down in the same building to Barnes and Thornburg, Suite 1200, and became the partner in charge there.

Today, four registered lobbyists for the Diamond State Port Corporation file from that suite. Thomas McGonigle, since November 1, 2019. Douglas Gramiak, since January 20, 2020. Shawn Tucker, since March 17, 2023, who used to run New Castle County’s Land Use Department. James Smith Junior, since October 20, 2023. Delaware has paid Barnes and Thornburg $13,719, 480.19.

And What Geoffrey Sawyer Does There Now

Unclaimed property is money that stops moving. An account nobody touches. A dividend check nobody cashes. Shares nobody claims. Because so many companies are incorporated here, Delaware collects an enormous amount of other people’s forgotten money, and it is the state’s third-largest source of revenue.

Geoffrey Sawyer, Governor Markell’s old deputy chief of staff, is a partner at Faegre Drinker in Wilmington, and unclaimed property is his practice. His firm biography describes him as known for advising states and large corporations on complying with unclaimed property laws. Then it says what he actually does. He leads the firm’s representation of the State of Delaware’s Voluntary Disclosure Agreement program, which has more than 1,200 enrolled companies.

That is the same fund that sent nearly $200 million to the Diamond State Port Corporation in January 2025. It is the fund the 2026 bond bill opened by another $60 million. And it is one of the revenue lines forecast by the council Alan Levin now chairs.

Delaware pays a private law firm to run the compliance side of its unclaimed property program. The partner who leads that work advises both the states collecting the money and the corporations that owe it. A former colleague from that firm now chairs the council that forecasts the money. Four more alumni of that firm are the paid lobbyists for the port the money built.

This drew questions once. Drinker Biddle won Delaware unclaimed property work, and Markell’s people showed up at the firm not long after. McGonigle said publicly that he took no part in the bidding while he worked for the Governor, that he does not work on the state program, and that he has never billed a minute to it. Joseph Schoell, who helped win the contract, said the firm bid in good faith.

The Other Place He Went

The second door Alan Levin walked through in 2015 was SoDel Concepts, the Sussex County restaurant company his late friend Matt Haley had built. Levin became Senior Advisor, and he still is.

Years later, when a magazine named Levin one of the most influential Delawareans, SoDel’s president Scott Kammerer put out a statement about him. Alan Levin, he said, had played a pivotal role in the growth of Amazon in the state.

That is not a critic’s line. That is his own employer’s press release.

Ten Dollars

Wanxiang America never did anything with the plant either. In October 2016 it hired CBRE to find somebody who would.

On October 25, 2017, a company called Boxwood Industrial Park LLC bought the whole one hundred forty-two acres at 801 Boxwood Road. Boxwood Industrial Park LLC belongs to Harvey, Hanna and Associates, a development firm out of Newport run by E. Thomas Harvey III and Thomas J. Hanna. M&T Bank put up the financing. Harvey said the firm was excited to bring its vision to reality. Hanna said his parents had grown up in Newport and Richardson Park, and that his father, his uncle and his grandfather had all worked in that plant.

Two purchase prices exist for that sale. Both were printed by Delaware Business Times. Covering a community meeting, the paper reported that the price recorded for more than three million square feet of manufacturing space was ten dollars. Writing later about how the deal came together, the same paper reported that Harvey Hanna paid about $10.4 million, according to New Castle County land records.

The day the purchase was announced, October 10, 2017, the Associated Press reported that neither the sale price nor specific redevelopment plans had been disclosed. It has stayed that way.

The County Executive of New Castle County that day was Matt Meyer, and he was delighted. It’s an exciting turn of events to get Boxwood into local hands, Meyer said. Harvey Hanna, he added, has a history of being committed to the county and the state. He said he would be open to offering county tax incentives to help redevelop the site, because it would raise the property value.

A year earlier, before he took office, Matt Meyer had been asked what should happen to the plant. Private sector demand, he said then, should decide the fate of the facility.

Three years after New Castle County tried to buy that plant and was told to stand down, a new County Executive welcomed its sale to a private developer at a price nobody would disclose, and offered county tax breaks on top.

Ten dollars on a deed is what a buyer and a seller write when they do not want the real number in the paper. Delaware charges its realty transfer tax on what was actually paid, so the true figure exists on the instrument. The number the public gets is ten dollars.

Fisker paid $18 million for that plant. Delaware put in $22 million and got nothing. New Castle County offered $9 million and was told there were no credible offers. Three years later, the deed said $10.

Who Bought It

E. Thomas Harvey III grew up in Wilmington, graduated from Conrad High School in 1970 and from the University of Delaware in 1975. Before he was a developer, he was in the trash business, and he was in it for twenty-five years. Harvey and Harvey Inc., Home Waste Inc., Harvey Mack Volvo Sales and Service. Confi-Shred. Together they cleared $100 million a year and offered the first recycling service anyone in Delaware had. In May 1997, he sold the whole thing to USA Waste of Delaware, which later became part of Waste Management. He sat on the Board of Governors of the Environmental Industries Association and the Chairman’s Council of the National Solid Waste Management Association and ran the Maryland and Delaware solid waste association.

Then he became a developer. He is president of Dewey Beach Enterprises, which built Lighthouse Cove and opened the first Hyatt-branded hotel in Delaware there in September 2013. In 2015, he co-founded TKo Hospitality Management, which now runs twenty hotels, five banquet halls, and four restaurants. In 2017, he launched Big Box Buildings with his son John. He joined the board of Trash Tech in 2016 and invested in it. He lives in Centerville and Rehoboth Beach.

He gives a great deal away and lets people know. Former board chair of the American Heart and Stroke Association of Delaware and still on its Northeast Region board. Twenty years on the Board of Trustees of Goldey-Beacom College, four of them as chair. He and his wife Robin Adair Harvey launched the American Heart Association Delaware Harvey Family Research Symposium in 2019.

He ran the Centerville School board and sat on Sanford School’s board. He sponsors two Wilmington youth teams in the Sonny Hill league in Philadelphia. He is a Delaware Diamonds benefactor at the University of Delaware, on the Lerner College advisory board, in the University of Delaware Alumni Wall of Fame and in the Conrad High School Hall of Fame.

Thomas J. Hanna, whom everyone calls T.J., teamed up with E. Thomas Harvey III in 1997 and turned a small real estate outfit into one of the largest development companies in the state. Harvey’s own executive biography dates the founding of the firm to 1998, a year after the partnership, which is the difference between when two men shook hands and when the paperwork was filed. Hanna has put up more than six million square feet across the mid-Atlantic. His own industry credits him with turning the Boxwood plant into one of the largest Amazon facilities in the country. He started the Delaware KIDS Fund in 2008, and it was renamed Sam’s KIDS in 2023. He stepped back from daily operations in 2025.

Now hold their lives up next to Alan Levin’s.

Alan Levin and E. Thomas Harvey III both sit on the advisory board of the University of Delaware’s Lerner College of Business and Economics.

Alan Levin chaired the board of the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce in 2005. In 2019, that same Chamber handed E. Thomas Harvey III its Marvin S. Gilman Award.

E. Thomas Harvey III sat on the board of the Delaware National Guard. Alan Levin holds the Delaware Distinguished Service Medal for his work with Guard and Reserve families.

Both men keep a house in Rehoboth Beach.

In 2015, E. Thomas Harvey III co-founded a hospitality company running hotels and restaurants in the Delaware beach towns. That same year, Alan Levin became senior advisor to a restaurant company in those same towns.

Alan Levin and T.J. Hanna are close friends.

And What Harvey Hanna Gave Matt Meyer

Between December 18, 2021 and January 25, 2022, six people connected to Harvey, Hanna and Associates each gave Matt Meyer the maximum a person may legally give in Delaware. Thirty-eight days, $7,200.

E. Thomas Harvey, listed as Harvey, Hanna and Associates, December 18, 2021, $1,200.

Robin Harvey, listed as Harvey Hanna, December 18, 2021, $1,200. The same day as her husband.

Thomas Harvey, listed as Harvey Hanna, December 30, 2021, $1,200.

Thomas Hanna, listed as Harvey Hanna, January 3, 2022, $1,200.

Katherine Kinnard, listed as Harvey Hanna, January 4, 2022, $1,200. Michael Kinnard is the firm’s Vice President and General Counsel.

Murray Dingwall, listed as Harvey Hanna, January 25, 2022, $1,200.

Four years after Matt Meyer called it an exciting turn of events to get Boxwood into local hands, six people from the company that got it wrote him six maximum checks inside five weeks.

John C. Fannin III, who used to be president of Harvey Hanna and is now executive adviser to its board, was made the first chair of the Delaware State Chamber Foundation. And the lawyer handling Harvey Hanna’s newest land purchases in Middletown is Shawn Tucker, the Barnes and Thornburg partner who lobbies for the Diamond State Port Corporation.

Six Months Later, Gulftainer Wanted It Too

On an evening in April 2018, about five hundred people crowded into a meeting of the Diamond State Port Corporation board, which voted unanimously to lease the Port of Wilmington for fifty years to GT USA Wilmington LLC, a brand new Delaware subsidiary of Gulftainer, a terminal operator out of the United Arab Emirates.

Peter Richards, Gulftainer’s chief executive, stood up and talked about freight and warehouse space at Boxwood Road. Gulftainer, it was reported plainly at the time, was in talks with Harvey Hanna, which owns the old GM Boxwood Road site, about developing an inland port. Jeff Bullock, then Delaware’s Secretary of State and chairman of that port board, used the same words and said the state would make sure roads like Interstate 495 could carry it.

Richards named two more sites near the port where the operation could expand. Pigeon Point and River’s Edge.

Six months after the deed recorded ten dollars, Harvey Hanna was named in public as Gulftainer’s partner for an inland port serving a fifty-year lease of the Port of Wilmington. And one of the two adjacent sites named beside it, Pigeon Point, is where AutoPort has processed cars since 1981, and where the Diamond State Port Corporation has held a free option to buy since 1995 and has renewed it six times without ever using it.

Gulftainer signed that September and promised up to $600 million, $400 million of it for a container terminal at Edgemoor, the old DuPont site the port corporation had bought in 2016. Gulftainer never built it. In 2023, the port quietly passed to a different company, Enstructure, without the General Assembly approval Delaware law requires.

Harvey Hanna also owns the Delaware River Industrial Park, forty-five acres on Lambson Lane in New Castle, half a mile from the Port of Wilmington where Interstates 95, 295 and 495 come together. In 2024, the firm finished a hundred thirty thousand square foot building there and leased all of it to PODS.

Tom Gordon wanted a distribution hub at Boxwood Road tied to an expanded Port of Wilmington. Alan Levin told the county in writing to wait. The county waited. Gordon’s idea got built. New Castle County does not own it.

What Stands There Now

Harvey Hanna knocked the General Motors building down in 2018. In November 2019, it sold eighty-eight acres to Dermody Properties of Nevada, which built to suit. Dermody put in at least $200 million. Amazon added $50 million in robotics. Delaware handed Amazon $4.5 million in cash to come.

Three point eight million square feet at 1025 Boxwood Road. Roughly three thousand people work inside. There is an Amazon sortation center at 801 Boxwood Road, and delivery stations at 851 Boxwood Road and 2421 Bear Corbitt Road in Bear.

Joseph N. DiStefano has been writing about business in this region since 1988, when he joined The Philadelphia Inquirer out of the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in economics and United States history. He has covered Wall Street for Bloomberg, worked for the Delaware News Journal, written a book about how the Roberts family built Comcast, and won a Gerald Loeb Award for his reporting on pensions. He has written the Inquirer’s PhillyDeals column since 2007. He describes his own beat as businesses, bosses, workers, fraud and the regional economy, and he once told an interviewer that news is information somebody else wants to suppress.

In February 2020, he went through Amazon’s subsidy application for the Boxwood Road warehouse and wrote down what the jobs were actually worth.

Amazon was promising $15 an hour to most of the thousand workers named in its application for $4.5 million in upfront state aid. The Amazon bosses on site, DiStefano wrote, would be paid less than General Motors workers used to be paid, counting inflation.

The building was five and a half stories and cost $250 million. Delaware’s development finance council approved the money unanimously the week before he wrote.

The county’s unemployment rate at the time was under three percent. Does Meyer really need a thousand more fifteen-dollar-an-hour jobs, DiStefano asked, and will many of the workers come from out of state, as they do at Amazon’s existing warehouses.

Delaware paid $4.5 million for a thousand jobs at $15 dollars an hour, on ground where 5,000 people once made cars for a living.

Harvey Hanna kept buying along the same road. In June 2026, an entity it owns, Route 40 LLC, received $1.14 million in state transportation grant money for 10.5 acres at 600 Pulaski Highway in Bear to build two warehouses. In July 2026, the firm paid $25.3 million for 103 acres at Jamison Corner in Middletown, bought from EQT Real Estate and approved for 1.3 million square feet, its first big purchase south of the canal.

Tom Gordon said Delaware had too many big-box stores and needed real jobs that pay real money. What stands on that ground now is a big box. It is the largest one in the state.

And in October 2019, Matt Meyer, then County Executive of New Castle County, appointed Alan Levin to run a twelve-person task force on the future of the Wilmington and New Castle County Airport. The task force recommended against renewing the county’s thirty-year lease with the Delaware River and Bay Authority. The Delaware River and Bay Authority has confirmed that Amazon wanted that airport as an air hub.

The airport sits between Boxwood Road and Middletown, in the middle of everything above.

The Second Chance

Matt Meyer became Governor of Delaware in January 2025, and within a year the same people were sitting in every room that decides.

Alan Levin was appointed to the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council and made its chairman in the same act, having never served a day on it. The council is thirty-odd appointed members from business, banking, accounting, labor, academia, and the legislature, and what it votes on is not advice. The Delaware Constitution forbids the state from appropriating more than ninety-eight percent of the council’s revenue estimate, so the council sets the ceiling on the entire state budget. A rule in place since 1991 caps new borrowing at five percent of that same estimate, so the council also sets the outer wall of the Bond Bill.

Unclaimed property is one of the lines it votes on. Nobody elects any of them, and under Executive Order 62, signed by Governor John Carney on August 27, 2024, they serve at the Governor’s pleasure and the Governor picks the chair.

To make room for Levin, Governor Meyer removed Michael Houghton, a Wilmington attorney who had chaired that council for eight years and who had chaired Delaware’s unclaimed property task force in 2014.

What The Money Actually Was

Truthline audited ninety-two campaign finance reports filed with the Office of the State Election Commissioner across five committees tied to Matt Meyer: Meyer for New Castle County, Meyer for Delaware, Change Can’t Wait PAC, Citizens for a New Delaware Way, and its Third-Party Advertiser. 9,063 individual contributions, $7,998,435,000.

Alan Levin gave $29,100 of it across eight contributions going back to April 2016. Ellen Levin gave $4,000 across five. Richard Levin, most likely his son, gave $3,050 across seven. $37,600 from the family, across twenty-six checks, over nine years. $15,000 of Alan Levin’s went to Change Can’t Wait PAC on June 10, 2024, three months before the primary, into the political action committee he himself chaired.

He was not the largest giver. He was not close.

The largest single source of money behind Matt Meyer’s campaign for Governor was Phillip Shawe, co-chief executive of TransPerfect Translations International of New York, whose company was at the center of one of the longest and most bitter corporate fights in the history of Delaware’s Court of Chancery. Shawe and TransPerfect put $1,300,000 across five contributions between June 13, 2024 and November 18, 2025 into Citizens for a New Delaware Way, a political action committee and third-party advertiser pair that is the second-largest pro-Meyer vehicle in the filings.

Michael Bloomberg, the former Mayor of New York, gave $250,00 to Change Can’t Wait PAC on September 4, 2024, six days before the Democratic primary.

The Hynansky family, which sells automobiles in Delaware, gave $86,900 across thirteen contributions, and Louis Capano gave $45,000 across two. One Hynansky contribution of $25,000, filed June 8, 2023, appears in the record under the name John Hyanski, missing the second n. Whether that was a transcription error or a filing choice cannot be determined from the document. What can be determined is that a name search that did not check for misspellings would never have found it.

And Charuni Patibanda gave $1,050 across five contributions between June and December 2023, and $400 more in 2019, before Governor Meyer made her Secretary of State and chair of the board of the Diamond State Port Corporation.

The road, and who bought along it

Drive north on Interstate 495 and get off at Exit 4. Edgemoor Road runs into Lighthouse Road, and Lighthouse Road runs into Hay Road, and Hay Road is the access road for the Edgemoor terminal site. That interchange is the spine of the whole corridor, and everything built along it, warehouse, logistics, or commercial, gets the benefit of a $635,000,000 public infrastructure project whether or not it has anything to do with ships.

Drawbridge Claymont gave $30,000 to Change Can’t Wait PAC. Drawbridge Claymont and the D2 Organization then received one million dollars from the Delaware Site Readiness Fund for fifty-eight acres at 6300 Philadelphia Pike in Claymont, for demolition and engineering work. Claymont sits directly along that corridor, on Interstate 495 and Governor Printz Boulevard, north of Edgemoor.

Thirty thousand dollars into the Governor’s political action committee. One million dollars out of a state fund, for fifty-eight acres on the same road as the port.

That is one parcel and one contributor. The question the corridor raises is larger, and it is answerable from records anyone can pull: who bought industrial land between the Pennsylvania line and the Port of Wilmington in the years before the Edgemoor expansion was announced, and how many of those buyers appear in the campaign finance filings. Every deed in that stretch is recorded with the New Castle County Recorder of Deeds, indexed by parcel, and every contribution is in the Election Commissioner’s archive. The overlap is a matter of arithmetic.

Alan Levin’s twenty-nine thousand one hundred dollars is not what makes him matter. He is the one the Governor put in the chair. The money that bought the campaign came from a New York translation company that had spent years at war with Delaware’s own Court of Chancery.

Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez was sworn in as Secretary of State on January 28, 2025. That office runs the Division of Corporations, which registers the roughly two million companies incorporated here, and also professional regulation, small business, the bank commissioner, the Public Service Commission, the public advocate, the Public Integrity Commission, the state archives, libraries, the arts, human and civil rights, alcoholic beverage control, the Veterans Home, and the unclaimed property Voluntary Disclosure Agreement program that Geoffrey Sawyer’s firm represents. She sits on the revenue council. She chairs the board of the Diamond State Port Corporation. Before all that, she ran New Castle County’s Land Use department under County Executive Matt Meyer.

Gregg Patterson became Secretary of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control. He is the Gregory Patterson who was Governor Markell’s deputy chief of staff and then Drinker Biddle’s senior government relations director in Delaware.

And Marcus Henry, who had been Matt Meyer’s economic development and policy director at the county, succeeded him as County Executive and now signs off on land use across the whole corridor.

The council that certifies the revenue. The department that holds the marina lease. The board that owns the port. The office that registers the corporations. The county that approves the land use. Inside one year, all of them.

What That Produced

Eleven days before Matt Meyer took the oath, on January 10, 2025, the Diamond State Port Corporation paid $2,850,000 for 1.91 acres at 701 Christiana Avenue and handed the land to Enstructure, the private operator. That address is the business address of Murphy Marine Services, a stevedoring company that has worked the Port of Wilmington for decades and has been a lobbying client of the Wilmington attorney Darrell J. Baker since October 20, 2008. In that same month, nearly $200 million of unclaimed property moved to the port corporation.

Over the fiscal year that followed, the council Alan Levin chairs raised Delaware’s constitutional spending ceiling by $747.5 million across four meetings. It never once said the word port in four sets of published minutes.

Those meetings got shorter as the numbers got bigger. October 20, 2025 ran a hundred seventy-nine minutes. December 15, a hundred seven. March 16, eighty-seven. May 18, seventy-five. Fifty-eight percent shorter across one fiscal year, under one chairman.

Public comment is the last item on every agenda. In October, December and March, the minutes record that nobody signed up. On May 18, 2026, one man did, and it was Rick Geisenberger, who used to be Delaware’s Secretary of Finance and before that ran the Division of Corporations. He told the council that anyone watching closely could have seen the corporate revenue problem by December and certainly by March from public data, called the flat franchise tax growth totally unprecedented, and asked whether it was prudent for Delaware to lean harder on unclaimed property.

Six weeks later Delaware leaned $60 million harder.

In March 2026, Michael Houghton had asked the Department of State for corporate revenue figures it had not produced. Two days later he got an email from Governor Meyer’s office ending his service. In May he asked Brian Devine, the interim executive director of the Diamond State Port Corporation, where an extra $110 million for Edgemoor was coming from. Within days he was off that task force too. The administration did not say the money came from unclaimed property until late June.

In the small hours of July 1, 2026, the General Assembly passed House Bill 500. 110 million to the port. 30 million to buy a marina. The cap on unclaimed property raised by 60 million. Governor Meyer signed it on July 6 and struck exactly one line out of more than $1.2 billion, and the line he struck was $35 million to expand Legislative Hall, the building where the General Assembly works.

Then And Now

In 2013, the privatization of the Port of Wilmington died in public, killed by a union that could see it and a legislature that could vote on it. Kinder Morgan wrote a letter naming the union and walked.

In 2023, the port changed hands with no concurrent resolution, no vote of the General Assembly, and no public hearing, because language slipped into a bond bill had traded sixty-two elected legislators for five signatures.

In 2014, New Castle County tried to buy the largest industrial site in the state for $9 million, and Alan Levin told a newspaper there were no credible offers while telling the county in writing to stand down. In 2017, that site changed hands on a deed that said $10, and six months later the buyer was named in public as Gulftainer’s partner for an inland port.

In 2015, the men who had run three Delaware administrations went to work at one law firm. By 2021, four of them lobbied for the state corporation that owns the port. By 2025, one of them chaired the council that decides what Delaware can spend on it, one ran the department that holds the marina lease, and one ran that firm’s work on Delaware’s unclaimed property program.

The first time they tried this, it all happened where people could watch. The second time, the vote became five signatures, the money came from a fund whose balance the state will not disclose, the one man who asked about it got an email, and the bill passed before sunrise.

And This Month, In Dover

The newest one did not start with a company. It started with three executive orders, signed in order, each making the next possible.

Executive Order 16 is the map. It concerns the Delaware Strategies for State Policies and Spending, the documents and maps that decide where the state puts its own money. After the Cabinet Committee on State Planning Issues approved the 2025 update on January 12, 2026, the order tells the Office of State Planning Coordination to run a 2026 Smart Growth Visioning process, to change those maps ahead of the normal five-year cycle, and to inventory every incentive the state can use to move development. It opens the map early and counts the levers.

Executive Order 18 is the speed. Signed February 26, 2026, Governor Meyer’s first order of the year, it created the Delaware Permitting Accelerator. One contact per agency. Agencies reviewing at the same time instead of one after another. A four-month target. A hundred twenty business days for housing. Energy is a priority category. Delaware, Meyer said, needed to stop being leaders of no and slow and become leaders of yes and now. Senate President Pro Tempore David Sokola and Speaker Melissa Minor-Brown both stood behind it. Applications opened May 4, 2026, under the name JobsFirst.

Executive Order 23 is the control. Signed July 26, 2026, it lets Governor Meyer change the Permitting Accelerator in writing whenever he likes, without another order.

Nine days later, on August 4, 2026, a Wilmington startup called Aternium, founded by Andrew Cottone, announced that Dover would be home to its first commercial clean hydrogen and heavy water plant. $226 million, about twenty acres at 201 and 301 Garrison Oak Drive, inside a four hundred-acre industrial park the City of Dover bought in 1999 with state money. Governor Meyer said the investment puts Delaware at the forefront of the next generation of energy and advanced manufacturing.

Two and a half weeks before that announcement, in mid-July, the Dover City Council had unanimously rewritten its zoning code to allow clean hydrogen plants in its industrial districts. Andrew Cottone spoke in favor of the ordinance before the council voted. A representative of the Becker Morgan Group also spoke for it, and described his own coming role as helping that company with process, site planning, planning commission, and surveying.

Aternium does not own the land. It expects to close in the last quarter of 2026. Engineering is due in February 2027, the investment decision in March, groundbreaking later that year, operations in 2028. Dover rewrote its zoning for a plant nobody has bought, engineered, financed, or permitted.

Linda Parkowski of the Kent Economic Partnership called it a major win for Central Delaware.

Dover changed the zoning first, and the company announced second. The permitting accelerator was built first, and the project came second. And it went to Kent County, where a $226 million hydrogen plant draws a fraction of the questions the same plant would draw sixty miles north.

IX. What the Escheat Fund Was Doing While Delaware Leaned On It

Follow the unclaimed property line across all four meetings, because it does something no summary of them has mentioned.

The gross figure never moved. It sat at $554.0 million in October, in December, in March, and in May, in every forecast year. That is the cap, and the council was told plainly in October that the cap has been reached every year since it was instituted and was expected to be reached again in Fiscal Year 2027.

What moved was refunds. Refunds are the money handed back to the people it belonged to in the first place. The owner of the forgotten account. The heir who finally filed. The company that came looking for its own dividend.

Table: unclaimed property in the Fiscal Year 2026 forecast as adopted at each DEFAC meeting, showing the net escheat line written down across 5 forecasts in 8 months

Source: Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council, General Fund Revenue Worksheet adopted at each meeting, Table 2 in each set of minutes.

In five months, with the same revenue director presenting to the same chairman, Delaware wrote down the net escheat revenue it expected to keep by thirty-eight million dollars. Every dollar of that write-down came from owners reclaiming their own property. Then House Bill 500 raised the ceiling on what the State may take from that fund from $554 million to $614 million.

Delaware’s own council cut expected escheat revenue by thirty-eight million dollars between October and March, because more of the money was being claimed by the people it belongs to. In June, the General Assembly raised the amount the State may take out of that same fund by sixty million dollars. The forecast went down. The withdrawal went up. Both numbers sit on State letterhead, four months apart.

Twenty-six Point Eight Million Dollars In December. Two Hundred Forty-Three Point Four Million In May.

The council publishes an extraordinary revenue figure. It is the space between the benchmark appropriation, which is what Delaware’s own spending discipline says the state should spend, and the 98 percent appropriation limit, which is the constitutional ceiling. Extraordinary revenue is what is available for the Budget Stabilization Fund or for one-time spending. It is the pot a bond bill draws against.

On December 15, 2025, the council adopted a Fiscal Year 2027 benchmark appropriation of $7,071.2 million against a 98 percent appropriation limit of $7,098.0 million, on a Budget Benchmark Index of 3.9 percent. Extraordinary revenue: $26.8 million. On March 16, 2026, the 98 percent limit rose to $7,132.0 million, an increase of $34.0 million from December and $399.0 million from October 2025. On May 18, 2026, the council adopted a Budget Benchmark Index of 4.1 percent, a benchmark appropriation of $7,084.6 million, and a 98 percent limit of $7,328.0 million. Extraordinary revenue: $243.4 million.

In December, there was twenty-six point eight million dollars of room. By May, there was two hundred forty-three point four. The pot grew by two hundred sixteen point six million dollars in five months, and then one hundred seventy-five million dollars of it left the building in a bill passed at three in the morning.

The Operating Deficit Running Underneath All Of It

One fact belongs beside every figure above, because it sits in all four worksheets and it never made a headline. Delaware planned to spend more than it collected in Fiscal Year 2026, and its own council said so at every meeting.

Here is that gap, meeting by meeting, exactly as Delaware’s own council adopted it. Expenditures are what Delaware planned to spend. Revenues are what Delaware expected to collect. The operating balance is the difference, and every one of them is negative.

The gap is covered out of prior year cash. On December 15, 2025, the same meeting that put extraordinary revenue at $26.8 million, the council set the Fiscal Year 2027 tax-supported debt limit at $347.4 million, five percent of estimated revenue.

And in October, the council adopted a long-term assumption that deserves its own line. Cash to the Bond Bill declines by about 30 percent and remains at that reduced level through Fiscal Year 2029. General Fund Capital Outlay in the adopted forecasts falls from $211.5 million actual in Fiscal Year 2025 to $158.6 million in Fiscal Year 2026, $147.4 million in Fiscal Year 2027, $110.4 million in Fiscal Year 2028, and $84.7 million in Fiscal Year 2029.

Delaware ran an operating deficit in every forecast of Fiscal Year 2026 its own council adopted, and its own long-term assumption has cash to the Bond Bill falling thirty percent and staying there through 2029. In that same fiscal year, Delaware committed one hundred ten million dollars to one terminal and thirty million dollars to one marina.

A Note On Precision, Offered To The Council Rather Than To The Reader

One more thing surfaced in the reading, and it belongs in the record even though standing alone it proves nothing. The October 20, 2025 minutes state that a motion was made, seconded, and approved to accept $7,554.6 million as the Fiscal Year 2027 expenditure estimate. Table 1b, attached to those same minutes, gives the Fiscal Year 2027 forecast as $7,544.6 million. The December minutes then reconcile against $7,544.6 million, describing the new $7,495.6 million figure as a reduction of $49.0 million from October.

Ten million dollars separates the motion as recorded from the table attached to it, and from the arithmetic the council itself used two months later. It is almost certainly a typographical error, and this report says so plainly rather than leaving the implication hanging. It is also the adopted expenditure estimate of the State of Delaware, in the official minutes of the council whose numbers set a constitutional spending ceiling and a statutory debt limit. Those minutes were approved as submitted on December 15, 2025, and they stand uncorrected today.

The minutes of one meeting record the council adopting a number ten million dollars different from the table attached to them. The council approved those minutes as submitted at its next meeting. Delaware’s written record is the only thing standing between the treasury and the bond bill, and Delaware does not appear to read it.

X. The Man Who Asked Where the Money Was

The March meeting is where this story is usually told from. The record starts earlier, and the earlier record is worse.

On October 20, 2025, with Chairman Alan Levin in the chair, the council reached the corporate revenue lines. Michael Houghton, the Wilmington attorney who had chaired this council for eight years, looked at the Corporate Franchise Tax out-year forecast and observed that it was flat. Kevin Knight of the Delaware Department of State, the department run by Secretary of State Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez, answered that collections depend on the market and that a sharper estimate would be available at the December meeting.

Houghton kept going. The minutes record that he then said the Corporate Franchise Tax, together with the Unclaimed Property cap, should be areas looked at if Delaware kept forecasting deficits in its revenue. Delaware kept forecasting deficits. It did so at that very meeting, and at all three that followed.

Eight months before House Bill 500 raised Delaware’s escheat ceiling by $60 million, the longest-serving chairman in the council’s history sat at that table and named the escheat cap out loud as one of two lines to watch. It is in the State’s own minutes, adopted and published. Nobody watched the line. They watched him.

Michael Houghton chaired DEFAC for eight years before Levin. At the March 2026 meeting, he pointed out that the corporate revenue figures in front of the council did not include January or February data, and asked for an update. He was careful about it. He said afterward he had not claimed the sky was falling, only that a little more understanding and transparency would be really useful.

Two days later, on March 18, 2026, Michael Houghton received an email from the office of Governor Matt Meyer telling him he was off the council. No hearing. No cause stated. No public announcement. The man who had chaired the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council for eight years, and who had served on it far longer, learned by email that the Governor had ended his service two days after he asked the Department of State for corporate revenue numbers it had not produced.

What The Minutes Of March 16, 2026 Actually Record

Those minutes run seven pages. Houghton’s question occupies a single paragraph, and it is the most consequential paragraph in the document. He raised the Corporate Franchise Tax. He referenced what the minutes call an unprecedented surge in entity formations in 2025 and into 2026. He noted the surge could begin to significantly affect the $2.1 billion in revenue Delaware was projecting off that line. And he asked for one thing: more refined information ahead of the May meeting.

Regina Mitchell, the Delaware Department of State official who administers the Voluntary Disclosure Agreement Program, answered for the Department. It was not yet prepared to revise projections, but expected updated information by the next meeting.

Two paragraphs later in the same minutes, Secretary of State Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez confirmed he was right. Answering a question from Chairman Alan Levin about whether corporate filers pay by check or by credit card, she volunteered that entity formations were up 15 %, that the associated revenue had not been collected yet, that it was expected in June, and that it was not reflected in the current projections.

He asked for a number. The Department said it was not ready. Two paragraphs later, the Secretary of State said the number existed, that it was fifteen percent, and that it was not in the forecast. He was proven right on the same page he was asking on. Two days later, he was removed.

One More Name On The March 16 Roll

The March 16, 2026 minutes list thirty-one members present and two absent, then name fifty-seven other people in attendance in a block of initials and surnames that runs half a page. One of them is K. Hartley-Nagle.

The publisher of this report attended that meeting, by Zoom, as many Delawareans do, and is carried on the State’s own attendance record for that afternoon. That is the meeting where Michael Houghton asked the Department of State for the corporate revenue data and was told the Department was not ready to give it. Two days later, Governor Matt Meyer removed him by email.

This is not reporting assembled from press accounts of a meeting. The State’s own attendance roll for that afternoon carries the name of the person writing this.

Senate President Pro Tempore David Sokola called it undue political interference and asked for reinstatement. Representative Charles Postles, who sits on DEFAC and on the Joint Finance Committee, said it severely undermined the group. John Flaherty of the Delaware Coalition for Open Government called it a deeply troubling signal to the citizens of this state. The Governor’s answer was that he does not govern for optics.

Then it happened again. Weeks later, Houghton, sitting on the Port of Wilmington Expansion Task Force, questioned the interim director of the Diamond State Port Corporation about where the additional $110 million was coming from. Within days, he resigned from the Task Force.

He asked where the corporate revenue went. Two days later, he was off the council that certifies revenue. He asked where the hundred and ten million was coming from. Days later, he was off the port task force. Two questions about money, two exits, four months apart.

At the May meeting he did not attend, the Department of State revised those same corporate lines upward: $9.1 million on Franchise Tax, $24.0 million on Limited Partnerships and LLCs, $14.0 million on Business Entity Fees, $3.0 million on Uniform Commercial Code filings. The correction he had asked for was made. He was not in the room.

And a former Secretary of Finance stood up in public comment that afternoon and said so. Rick Geisenberger, who also ran the Division of Corporations, told the council that the need for these adjustments were apparent to many long-time DEFAC observers as early as December and certainly by March based on publicly available data. He called the flat franchise growth totally unprecedented. Then he asked the question that should have stopped the bond bill: whether it is prudent to increase Delaware’s reliance on a closely related revenue, unclaimed property.

On May 18, 2026, Delaware’s former Secretary of Finance stood at a public microphone and questioned whether it was prudent to lean harder on unclaimed property. Six weeks later, at three in the morning, House Bill 500 leaned sixty million dollars harder.

XI. The Escheat Line, Finished

The council met a fifth time on June 15, 2026, sixteen days before House Bill 500 passed. The minutes of that meeting have still not been published. The worksheets have. They complete the sequence.

Unclaimed property in the Fiscal Year 2026 forecast, meeting by meeting, and what Delaware actually collected, in millions

Sources: Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council, General Fund Revenue Worksheet, Table 2, adopted at each meeting, and the June 12, 2026 worksheet prepared for the June 15 meeting. Actuals from the State of Delaware Statement of General Fund Receipts and Refund Disbursements by Major Category as of June 30, 2026, transmitted by the Secretary of Finance on July 29, 2026.

$32 million of that write-down came at the last meeting, on June 15. Sixteen days later, the General Assembly raised the ceiling on that same fund by $60 million.

The actuals confirm the forecast was still too generous. Gross abandoned property receipts landed at $554,000,000 exactly, the cap, to the dollar, as they do every year. Refunds landed at $203,701,388 against $128,038,529 the year before, an increase of

59.1 %. Delaware kept $350.3 million of the escheat pot in Fiscal Year 2026, against the $424 million its own council forecast in October.

Delaware’s own council cut the escheat forecast five times in eight months, by $70 million in total, and the year still closed $73.7 million below where October said it would. The money was going out the door faster than the State could forecast it, and Delaware widened the door.

And In The Same Document, The Out-Years Went The Other Way

Read the June 12, 2026 worksheet across, not down. In the Fiscal Year 2026 column, refunds were revised from $168 million to $200 million, a $32 million deterioration, because that is what was actually happening. In the Fiscal Year 2027 column of that same worksheet, refunds were revised in the opposite direction, from $130 million down to $115 million, improving the net line by $15 million. And in the Fiscal Year 2028 column, gross unclaimed property was raised from $525 million to $554 million, an increase of $29 million, putting the out-year right back at the cap.

On one page, on one afternoon, Delaware conceded that escheat refunds had blown past $200 million in the year that was ending, and assumed they would fall to $115 million in the year beginning. A 42% drop, forecast in the same document that recorded the record. Nothing in that worksheet explains why.

The Ceiling, At Its Final Height

The Balance and Appropriations Worksheet adopted on June 15, 2026 carries the last numbers written before the bond bill. A Fiscal Year 2027 revenue estimate of $7,224.4 million. An unencumbered cash balance from Fiscal Year 2026 of $408.8 million. A 100 percent appropriation limit of $7,633.2 million. A 98 % appropriation limit, the constitutional ceiling, of $7,480.5 million. A prior 98 % limit, set May 18, of $7,328.0 million, an increase of $152.5 million from the prior meeting. And against the October 2025 limit of $6,733.0 million, an increase of $747.5 million, a figure the document states on its own face. The Fiscal Year 2026 operating balance on the same sheet is negative $146.0 million.

Sixteen days later, House Bill 500 committed $110 million to the port, $30 million to the marina, and $35 million to a Legislative Hall expansion the Governor then struck.

Three-quarters of a billion dollars of new spending authority created in eight months, $750,000,000 across five meetings, by a council that never once said the word port, in the fiscal year the port received $110 million.

Seven Days, And Every Legislator Had It In Writing

There is a document that removes the excuse, and it is not obscure. Every month the Secretary of Finance sends the General Fund financial report to the Governor and to the members of the General Assembly, by name, on Department of Finance letterhead. It shows cash, receipts, refunds, and disbursements. It is posted publicly the same day.

Michael R. Smith, Secretary of Finance, transmitted the report for the month ending May 31, 2026, on June 23, 2026. It went to the Honorable Matt Meyer, Governor, and to the members of the 153rd General Assembly. On Exhibit A-1 of that report, abandoned property refunds through May 31, 2026 stood at $198,330,148, against $127,033,639 for the same period the year before. An increase of 56.1 %, printed on a State document, addressed to every person who would vote on the bond bill.

House Bill 500 passed eight days later, in the small hours of July 1, 2026, raising the ceiling on that fund by $60 million, with members complaining they had not been given time to read what they were voting on.

They did not have to be curious. The Secretary of Finance mailed them the number, by name, eight days before the vote. The escheat fund was paying out 56 % more than the year before, and it was on page four of a report every one of them received.

The report for the month ending June 30, 2026, showing the full year, was transmitted on July 29, 2026, four weeks after the bill was signed.

And The Meeting Itself Has No Record

Every other DEFAC meeting in this sequence produced minutes within nine days. October 20 was minuted October 21. December 15 was minuted December 16. March 16 was minuted March 24. May 18 was minuted May 27.

The June 15, 2026 meeting has produced no minutes. The worksheets are posted. The expenditure forecast, the revenue worksheet, and the Balance and Appropriations calculation are all public. The narrative record of who said what, who asked what, and who was in the room is not.

That is the meeting that set the final appropriation ceiling at $7,480.5 million, cut the escheat forecast by another $32 million, and moved the partnership line by $137 million. It is the meeting closest to the bond bill, and it is the only one of the five with no published account.

Delaware published the numbers that authorized the spending and has not published the record of the meeting that adopted them. Four meetings were minuted within nine days. The fifth, the one sixteen days before the bond bill, still has none.

XII. How Five Companies At Two Addresses Reached Five Thousand Two Hundred Dollars

The contribution limit exists to stop exactly what happened here, and it did not.

Delaware law caps contributions at 15 Del. C. section 8010. No person may give more than $1,200 to a statewide candidate during an election period. Every contribution in Chart A is at or under that ceiling. Darrell J. Baker Esquire, PA gave exactly $1,200. Leo Holt gave exactly $1,200. The four limited liability companies gave $1,000, $600, $600, and $600.

Under Delaware law, each limited liability company counts as its own person. Section 8010 contains no attribution rule aggregating contributions from entities under common ownership, the way federal campaign finance law does. So five companies sharing two addresses may each give up to the individual maximum, and the arithmetic multiplies. Which is the point.

The ceiling is $1,200. One address on the canal produced $1,800. Add the post office box in Rockland and the lobbyist’s own firm, and it is $5,200. Every dollar of it inside the law. Delaware did not fail to enforce its campaign finance limits here. Delaware wrote them this way.

One detail of the record belongs to Anthony J. Albence, the Delaware State Election Commissioner, who runs the Department of Elections and reviews every campaign finance report filed in this state. Where a contributor is not an individual, Delaware’s disclosure rules require the identification of a responsible party once that entity’s aggregate contributions cross a threshold. The filed reports list these five entities by name and address with no responsible party named alongside them. Commissioner Albence’s office is the office that decides whether that satisfies the rule.

XIII. Then The Money Went The Other Way

Twenty months of public spending follow, and it runs toward the same addresses.

January 10, 2025. Two Million Eight Hundred Fifty Thousand dollars.

Eleven days before Matt Meyer took the oath as Governor, the Diamond State Port Corporation adopted Resolution 25-03 authorizing the purchase of 1.91 acres at 701 Christiana Avenue in Wilmington for $2,850,000 in public money. Enstructure, the port’s private operator, had exercised a right of first refusal on the parcel, and the land was added to Enstructure’s leasehold.

701 Christiana Avenue is the business address of Murphy Marine Services, and Murphy Marine Services has been a registered lobbying client of Darrell J. Baker since October 20, 2008. The parcel is tax parcel 26-066.00-001, 1.91 acres, the exact acreage named in Resolution 25-03. Commercial property databases drawing on New Castle County tax records list the last recorded sale of that parcel as 2016 and carry an annual property tax of roughly $6,100. The January 10, 2025 transfer authorized by the Diamond State Port Corporation for $2,850,000 does not appear in those records. The deed and the settlement statement are recorded with the New Castle County Recorder of Deeds and searchable by that parcel number. Delaware has never said who was paid.

That is not a coincidence, and it is not a technicality. The Diamond State Port Corporation, a state-owned corporation, spent $2,850,000 of public money on a parcel carrying the business address of a company whose registered Delaware lobbyist is Darrell J. Baker, eleven days before Matt Meyer was sworn in as Governor, and handed the land to Enstructure, the private operator. The deed and the settlement statement for tax parcel 26-066.00-001 are recorded with the New Castle County Recorder of Deeds and are searchable by parcel number on the county’s own public records system. Delaware has never explained who was paid.

What The State Has Actually Paid These People

The State of Delaware publishes every payment it makes, by vendor name, on its open data portal. It is current through June 29, 2026, and anyone can query it. Here is what it returns.

Three of those lines deserve their own sentence.

On September 21, 2021, the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, then and now the agency that granted the marina its concession on state parkland, paid seven hundred fifty thousand dollars to Summit North Marina Inc out of Watershed Stewardship, coded Other Professional Services. Ten days later, on October 1, 2021, Darrell J. Baker registered with the State of Delaware as the lobbyist for Summit North Marina LLC. Three days after that, on October 4, 2021, he registered four more entities on a single day: Chesapeake and Delaware Dredging LLC, Summit North Dredging LLC and Pristine Yacht Services LLC, all three at 3000 Summit Harbour Place in Bear, and Summit Point LLC at Post Office Box 422 in Rockland. Two of the four are dredging companies, and their names are Chesapeake and Delaware Dredging LLC and Summit North Dredging LLC.

On June 25, 2026, the State paid Darrell J. Baker Esquire P. A. two payments of $9,000 from the Insurance Coverage Office, coded Claim Payments. Five days later, the General Assembly passed House Bill 500 with $30 million to buy the marina he swore under oath he was the managing agent of. Claim payments are ordinary. Nobody put the two facts in the same room.

And Barnes and Thornburg LLP, the law firm whose four Wilmington lawyers are the Diamond State Port Corporation’s registered lobbyists, has been paid $13,719,480,000.13 by the State of Delaware. Those four lobbyists are Thomas McGonigle, registered November 1, 2019, former Chief of Staff to Governor Jack Markell; Douglas Gramiak, registered January 20, 2020, former Chief of Staff to Governor John Carney; Shawn Tucker, registered March 17, 2023, former General Manager of New Castle County Land Use; and James Smith Junior, registered October 20, 2023. All four file from 222 Delaware Avenue, Suite 1200, Wilmington. The Department of Finance alone paid the firm $1.1 million in Fiscal Year 2023, $3.50 million in Fiscal Year 2024, $4.25 million in Fiscal Year 2025, and $4.46 million in Fiscal Year 2026. Thirteen payments a year, rising every year.

The Diamond State Port Corporation, owned by the State of Delaware, retains four lobbyists from one law firm, Barnes and Thornburg LLP, to lobby the General Assembly that funds it. The State of Delaware pays that same firm nearly

$14 million. That firm gave Governor Matt Meyer the legal maximum three years running, on September 27, 2023, October 10, 2024, and November 20, 2025. Every transaction disclosed. None of them ever on the same page.

The Same Names, One Office Lower

None of this began in Dover. The county side surfaces in the New Castle County Office of Law monthly reports, the documents that list what outside law firms billed the county and for what.

Connolly Gallagher, through Max Walton, holds $1,687,196.54 in documented county work; Walton gave the Meyer committees three times, $1,350. Scott G. Wilcox billed $601,360.36 cumulatively for sheriff’s sale work, in an office where outside counsel was budgeted at roughly $284,000 for five consecutive years while actuals ran between $702,000 and $1.1 million; Wilcox gave seven times across all three Meyer committees, $5,250, including $1,500 to Change Can’t Wait PAC on June 27, 2024. Stradley Ronon appears in the county record with a $1,200 contribution one day before a monthly report listing, and is also PhilaPort’s counsel in the Edgemoor litigation. Ballard Spahr appears in the county record on the Highland View defense, and gave $1,200 on August 22, 2024. And the Barnes and Thornburg circle gave $3,600 in twenty-four days before the 2024 election: McGonigle $1,200 on October 5, the firm $1,200 on October 10, Tucker $200 on October 19 and $1,000 on October 29, that last one filed from 222 Delaware Ave Ste 1200.

The firms that billed New Castle County under County Executive Matt Meyer are the firms the State of Delaware pays under Governor Matt Meyer. Same names. Same building on Delaware Avenue. One office higher.

That building has a history too. On June 14, 2021, Barnes and Thornburg hired eight people away from Faegre Drinker Biddle and Reath in Wilmington: partners Thomas McGonigle, Shawn Tucker and Michael Maimone, government relations consultants Mary Kate McLaughlin and Douglas Gramiak as co-directors of state government affairs, Michael DeNote as of counsel, Sawyer Traver as an associate and Whitney Potts as a paralegal. McGonigle became partner in charge and joined the firm management committee.

He had been chief of staff to Governor Markell from 2009 to 2012, chief legal counsel and policy director to Governor Carper before that, and a deputy attorney general before that. Alan Levin had joined the same firm, then Drinker Biddle and Reath, as Of Counsel in 2015.

Alan Levin was Of Counsel at that same firm, Drinker Biddle and Reath, no later than 2015, when he left the Delaware Economic Development Office; how much earlier the relationship began is not established on the public record. Drinker Biddle and Reath gave Matt Meyer’s county campaign six hundred dollars on September 26, 2016, filed from 222 Delaware Avenue, Suite 1410.

Shawn Tucker filed from 222 Delaware Avenue in October 2020. All four Diamond State Port Corporation lobbyists now file from 222 Delaware Avenue, Suite 1200: Thomas McGonigle, registered November 1, 2019; Douglas Gramiak, registered January 20, 2020; Shawn Tucker, registered March 17, 2023; and James Smith Junior, registered October 20, 2023.

Suite 1410 in 2016. Suite 1200 by 2024. Same building, same people, different letterhead. And in between, four of them became the registered lobbyists for the state corporation that owns the Port of Wilmington.

July 1, 2026. Thirty Million Dollars.

House Bill 500, the Fiscal Year 2027 Bond and Capital Improvements Act, cleared the House in the small hours after members complained openly that they were being asked to vote on bills they had not been given time to read. Inside it was $30 million to the Office of Management and Budget for Building and Land Acquisition, authorizing the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control to buy Summit North Marina from its owners.

The most damaging testimony about that purchase did not come from a critic. It came from the Cabinet Secretary who asked for the money. Appearing before the Bond Bill Committee, Secretary Gregg Patterson explained the purchase would get the State out of a difficult lease agreement. Then he said this: We have not seen payment from them for a number of years.

He continued. Secretary Gregg Patterson told the committee the property owners have made claims against his Department over how things State Parks has done have impacted their operations. He called it an impasse. He told the committee the State has not made any money off the property. He did not name the owners. According to sources, Darrell J. Baker and Leo Holt have or have had interests in Summit North Marina, the marina Delaware is buying for $30 million. Darrell J. Baker is the registered Delaware lobbyist for Leo Holt’s company, Holt Logistics Corporation. Darrell J. Baker is the registered agent of Summit North Marina LLC and swore under oath in federal court that he is its managing agent.

Gregg Patterson, Secretary of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, is the cabinet officer who asked the General Assembly for the money.

Set that against the sequence. A private operator holds a concession on Delaware public parkland. The operator has not paid the State in years. The operator has claims pending against the State agency that granted the concession. The operator’s registered lobbyist, and four companies at the operator’s address and post office box, gave the sitting Governor’s campaign $4,000 across three days in October 2024. And the State’s answer is to pay that operator $30 million for improvements sitting on land the State already owns.

Governor Meyer defended it. He called the marina a critical state asset and said the one-time spend will yield significant revenue, and an economic opportunity for the state, and environmental preservation for generations to come. His own Secretary had just told the legislature the State has not made any money off the property.

Republicans objected in committee and again on the House floor. The $30 million survived. Of more than $1.2 billion in that bill, the Governor used his line item veto exactly once, and he used it on $35 million for a Legislative Hall expansion, explaining that Delawareans are struggling to pay rent and health care.

A tenant stops paying, sues the landlord, gives the landlord’s campaign four thousand dollars, and the landlord buys the tenant out for thirty million. He struck exactly one line from that bill. It was not this one. His stated reason for the line he did strike was that Delawareans are struggling to pay rent.

XIV. The Registered Agent

Before Delaware pays anyone $30 million, a reasonable person would want to know who is getting it. Delaware makes that unusually hard, and the difficulty is by design.

Under 6 Del. C. section 18-201, a Delaware limited liability company’s Certificate of Formation must state only the name of the company and the name and Delaware address of its registered agent. Members and managers are not listed. Delaware LLCs file no annual reports. The Division of Corporations does not request, obtain, or store any information about who owns them, and Delaware law permits nominee members. Delaware sells that anonymity to the world, and it is one of the state’s largest industries.

But the statute requires one name, and that one name is on the record. The registered agent for Summit North Marina LLC, formed June 9, 2010, and for Chesapeake and Delaware Dredging LLC, formed July 15, 2021, both at 3000 Summit Harbour Place in Bear, is Darrell J. Baker, Esquire.

Delaware requires an LLC to disclose exactly one human being, and in this case that human being is the registered Delaware lobbyist for the company suing to stop the Port of Wilmington.

What The Marina Actually Is

It occupies roughly 129 acres inside Lums Pond State Park. That is public land, and it has been throughout. It operates under a concession agreement with Delaware State Parks, which lists the facility on its own website and states that it is managed and operated by Summit North Marina, LLC. It holds what a 2019 commercial listing described as an Army Corps of Engineers federal lease. The facility carries 394 slips by that commercial listing and roughly 24,000 square feet of structures, while the State’s own parks page describes a 300-slip system. Which figure the State used to value a thirty-million-dollar purchase is a question the appraisal answers.

What Delaware is buying, therefore, is a leasehold position and the improvements standing on it. Not the land. The people of Delaware already own the land.

Sworn, In Federal Court

There is a document that settles what Darrell J. Baker was to this marina, and it is not a registry entry. It is an affidavit he signed under oath and filed in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware.

In 2006, a boat owner named John B. Picchi sued Summit North Marina, Inc. over ice damage to his vessel during the marina’s ice-breaking operations. The case is Picchi v. Summit North Marina, Inc., No. 1:06-cv-00193-MPT, before Judge Mary Pat Thynge. On June 14, 2007, the marina served its answers to interrogatories. Page three of that filing is a notarized affidavit, and it reads as follows: I, DARRELL J. BAKER, being duly sworn, do depose and say that I am the managing agent for Summit North Marina, Inc., and that Defendant’s Answers to Plaintiff’s Interrogatories are true and correct to the best of my information, knowledge and belief. Sworn to and subscribed before a Notary Public, State of Delaware, County of New Castle, June 2007.

Not registered agent. Managing agent. His own words, under oath, in federal court, nineteen years before the State of Delaware agreed to pay that marina thirty million dollars.

Eight months earlier, in the marina’s Initial Disclosures of October 24, 2006, its counsel listed the persons likely to have discoverable information. Baker was named first, care of the company, ahead of the general manager, and spelled there as Darryl. The sworn spelling is the one that governs, and it matches all ten lobbying registrations and the July 2026 Superior Court docket, where he appears as attorney identification 002243 at 1601 Concord Pike, Suite 100.

The same interrogatory answers name the rest of the operation in the marina’s own words. Christopher Lloyd, maintenance in 2003 and general manager by 2007. Janice Trala, the general manager in 2003, last known address 102 Fairmont Drive, Bear. Keith King, Charles Graves, Benjamin Bauer and Larry Holden. Lloyd, King and Bauer were the three men who operated the ice-breaking vessel, a steel boat the marina built itself, which is why it had no identification number, make or model.

Summit North Marina has been in federal court in Delaware at least eight times since 1994, mostly as a plaintiff pursuing marine contract actions against vessels: Regal Motor Yacht in 1994, Vessel Renaissance in 1998, LA TI DA and LOVE TUG and INXS in 1999, See Mowee in 2000. Then, as a defendant in Picchi in 2006, and again in 2019 when Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company sued Summit North Marina, LLC.

Read the names on those dockets in order, and one more thing surfaces. Through 2006, the party is Summit North Marina and Summit North Marina, Inc. By 2019, it is Summit North Marina, LLC. That is the same split the State’s own records carry. The Delaware Checkbook shows the $750,000 paid in September 2021 going to Summit North Marina Inc. The lobbyist registry, the campaign contribution, and the State Parks page all say LLC.

Two entities, one address, one marina, and a State that has now paid money under both spellings. Which one holds the concession, and which one is being bought for thirty million dollars, is a question the purchase agreement has to answer before the check clears.

The Same Man, On The Minutes, Meeting After Meeting

Through 2025, while the port lost cargo and the state let its dredging obligation slide, Baker appeared at meeting after meeting of the Diamond State Port Corporation Board. The minutes record him. On June 23, 2025, he asked how the project had gotten this far without a feasibility study. On July 28, 2025, the minutes identify him as attorney for Holt Logistics. On September 30, 2025, the minutes record him representing Holt and asking about the whereabouts of feasibility studies. He has also been a speaker at community meetings held under the banner Stop the Edgemoor Port.

Now hold the whole sequence in one line. In October 2024, his law practice, four entities tied to his marina and its post office box, and the president of Holt Logistics put $5,200 into the campaign of the man who would become Governor. Through 2025, he sat in the public meetings of the state corporation building the terminal his client was suing to stop, creating a record of unanswered questions. In June 2026, the State of Delaware agreed to pay thirty million dollars for the marina whose registered agent, by operation of Delaware law, is him, and whose managing agent he swore under oath in federal court that he was.

A dredging company registered by the lobbyist for the port operator that profits when Delaware does not dredge. That is not a conflict at the edges. That is the whole shape of the thing, and it is filed with the Division of Corporations.

Every fact in this section came off a State of Delaware registry, a federal court docket or a State payment record, and every one of them carries a date.

The question goes to the officials who wrote the check. Three documents settle what is left, and Delaware officials hold all three: the concession and lease held by Secretary Gregg Patterson’s Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control; the appraisal held by the Office of Management and Budget; and the purchase agreement executed under House Bill 500, which must name every party receiving public money.

There is one moment when the owners of Summit North Marina LLC must be named on a public document, and it is the moment the State hands over the check. Governor Matt Meyer should publish that document before the money moves, not after.

XV. The Law That Was Written To Stop This

Delaware anticipated a version of this and wrote a statute against it. The statute is still on the books today, in the current code, unamended.

Title 29, section 8783 of the Delaware Code says the Diamond State Port Corporation shall not enter into any agreement or transaction to transfer, privatize, or lease all or substantially all of the Port of Wilmington to a single entity, or to a related group of entities, unless three things happen. The Chair presents the terms to the Joint Committee on Capital Improvement. The members of that committee then explain the terms to their caucuses. And the General Assembly, within thirty days, approves the agreement by concurrent resolution in its entirety.

Then comes the sentence that matters most, and almost nobody in Delaware knows it is there. If the General Assembly does not approve or reject the proposed final agreement or transaction in its entirety by concurrent resolution within 30 days, then the proposed final agreement or transaction shall be deemed rejected by the General Assembly.

Silence is a no. The law was drafted so that inaction kills the deal rather than passing it.

That process was followed once. In April 2018, Governor John Carney publicly thanked the Bond Bill committee for endorsing the Gulftainer transaction and said this in a press release still posted on the State’s own news site: I urge members of the Delaware House of Representatives and Delaware Senate to take up and pass a concurrent resolution that will allow this transaction to move forward.

A complaint filed in New Castle County Superior Court on July 27, 2026 by five Delaware taxpayers, with Darrell J. Baker as the filing attorney, alleges that when port operations moved from Gulftainer to Enstructure in 2023, no concurrent resolution was sought and none was passed, because language added to the Fiscal Year 2023 bond bill had replaced a vote of the entire General Assembly, sixty-two elected legislators, with the assent of five officials. Those five are the two co-chairs of the Joint Committee on Capital Improvement, which today are Representative Debra Heffernan of Bellefonte and Senator Jack Walsh of Stanton; the Controller General, the legislature’s own chief fiscal officer; the Senate President Pro Tempore, today Senator David Sokola of Newark; and the Speaker of the House, today Representative Melissa Minor-Brown of New Castle. If the complaint is right, the transfer was invalid, and every agreement and revision since then is void.

The docket names the plaintiffs as Barbara Boese, Sarah Graham, John Graham, Simeon Hahn and Loretta Mooney, each carrying the notation Address: unavailable. Superior Court Judge Sean Lugg recused himself on July 30 after twenty-five years in the Department of Justice divisions that had not collected what Gulftainer owed the State. The recusal letter noted that some members of the legislature are interested in discovery, depositions, and trial testimony from Department of Justice employees and possibly from the Attorney General. Counsel for the port corporation called recusal neither warranted nor appropriate. The case went to Judge Sheldon K. Rennie.

The obvious belongs on the page rather than left for someone else. Darrell J. Baker, the lawyer making that argument, is the registered Delaware lobbyist for Holt Logistics Corporation, the company that wants Edgemoor stopped. He is also the registered agent and, by his own sworn affidavit, the managing agent of Summit North Marina, the marina the State is buying for thirty million dollars. According to sources, Baker and Leo Holt have or have had interests in that marina together. All of it belongs to the reader.

None of it answers the argument. The statute says what it says. Governor Carney said what he said in 2018. The concurrent resolution requirement is in the Delaware Code this morning, and Delawareans are entitled to know whether their government followed it.

The permanent law was never repealed. It was stepped around for one transaction by a rider in a budget bill. Delaware still has the statute. What it lost was the vote.

XVI. What The Federal Judge Found The Second Time Around

On July 10, 2026, the Holt companies filed again in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Civil Action No. 2:26-cv-04821, before Judge Kearney once more. The complaint is worth reading for what it says about how the permits came back.

On December 11, 2024, the port corporation sent PhilaPort a brief letter requesting a Statement of No Objection. The complaint describes it as providing no reasoning or explanation to support its request. On January 10, 2025, PhilaPort answered that it was committed to a robust process and identified five specific studies it needed, including a comprehensive vessel traffic study and a maintenance dredging plan. On April 23, 2025, the Army Corps wrote to the port corporation and asked the applicant to provide a written response to the court’s ruling and to PhilaPort’s five concerns. The agency directed the party seeking the permit to answer the court’s criticisms of the agency.

The port corporation’s consultant, Jacobs Engineering Group, produced a technical report in October 2025 and a second version in December 2025. Neither was made public. The Corps issued no public notice of the new material and took no public comment. The complaint says the Corps invented an entirely new category of supplemental public interest review for this project.

On or about April 10, 2026, seventeen days after receiving detailed objections from a retired Coast Guard captain, the Corps reissued the permits. It granted the port corporation an exception to the Statement of No Objection requirement. It again maintained that safety under its regulations relates only to dams, in direct contravention of the court’s prior decision. The Corps issued no Statement of Findings and no Summary of Findings, only a Memorandum for Record. The plaintiffs sought that document through federal public records law and did not receive it until May 26, 2026, when the port corporation filed it in a Delaware state court in separate litigation.

One date in that sequence deserves its own line. Governor Meyer announced the permits and declared the project shovel-ready on April 8, 2026. The complaint dates the reissuance on or about April 10, 2026.

The new complaint names individuals as well as the agency: the United States Army Corps of Engineers, Colonel Jesse Curry as District Commander for the Philadelphia District, Todd Schaible as Chief of the Regulatory Branch, and Ryan Baum. The cause of action is the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. 702. There is no jury demand.

The agency that lost the case exempted itself from the procedure the court ordered it to follow. There has been no appeal, no reversal, and no new facts. There has been an exemption, and the exemption is the entire mechanism by which the public was told the permits were reissued.

XVII. Three Filings, One Judge, Thirty-Two Months

The federal record on Edgemoor is not one lawsuit, and any account that speaks of the Holt lawsuit in the singular has told two-thirds of the story.

Greenwich Terminals LLC filed against the United States Army Corps of Engineers on November 3, 2023, case number 2:23-cv-04283 in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. It drew Judge Mark A. Kearney. Four months later, on March 8, 2024, the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority filed its own action against the same defendant, case number 2:24-cv-01008, and drew the same judge. The October 28, 2024 vacatur issued in those two cases together, reported at 2024 WL 4595590.

Set that second filing against a document Delaware produced itself. On January 29, 2024, the Attorney General of Delaware issued Opinion 24-IB04. Inside it, the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control describes, in the State’s own words, who was challenging Delaware’s permit before the Environmental Appeals Board. Two of the three appellants were owned by Holt: Greenwich Terminals LLC, which operates the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal in Philadelphia, and Gloucester Terminals LLC, which operates the Gloucester Marine Terminal in New Jersey. The third appellant was the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority, a public agency of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and it was represented by Holt’s own law firm, Stradley Ronon Stevens and Young, the Philadelphia firm that gave Governor Matt Meyer’s campaign one thousand two hundred dollars on September 26, 2024. The Attorney General’s conclusion in that opinion is that Holt’s legal counsel in the petition also represents the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority in the appeal, and that Holt owns two of the other appellants.

Thirty-eight days after Delaware wrote that down, the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority walked into federal court and filed on its own.

Three months before the third filing, on April 15, 2026, S and P Global Ratings recited the Port Wilmington expansion and dredging project in the Economy section of the report that let Delaware sell three hundred twenty-four million dollars of general obligation bonds. The bond market heard about Edgemoor in April. The lawsuit arrived in July.

Same plaintiff. Same defendant. Same judge. Same objection. Three filings across thirty-two months, and Pennsylvania’s own port authority is one of them.

XVIII. What The Family Across The River Actually Owns

Nobody spends four years and a fortune in legal fees to stop a project that would fail. You spend it to stop one that would work. To see why, you have to look past the lawsuit at the whole business.

The Holts did not begin in containers. They began in trucks and warehouses, and the old names still surface in federal court files like fossils in a riverbank. Holt Hauling and Warehousing Systems. Holt Cargo Systems. Holt Oversight and Logistical Technologies. Astro Holdings. Delaware River Stevedores. Penn Terminals.

Today the terminals sit in three states, all of them on the forty-five-foot channel Wilmington cannot reach. Greenwich Terminals LLC runs the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal, the container heart of the Port of Philadelphia. Gloucester Terminals LLC runs the Gloucester Marine Terminal at 160 Essex Street in Gloucester City and the newer operation at Paulsboro. The corporate address for all of it is 101 South King Street, Gloucester City, New Jersey, a town of eleven thousand four hundred eighty-four people directly across the river from Philadelphia.

The real asset is cold. On July 9, 2025, Crowley, the largest United States-based ocean shipping company, began the first regular direct service between Central America and the Philadelphia area. Two ships, the Copan and the Quetzal, alternating Wednesdays at the Gloucester City terminal, carrying apparel and fruit north and auto parts south to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Crowley’s people said plainly what drew them: the Holt family’s cold storage and shipping systems in Gloucester City, for bananas, melons, okra, cucumbers, plantains, sugar and coffee out of a Guatemalan port called Santo Tomás de Castilla.

Bananas out of Santo Tomás de Castilla is what the Port of Wilmington did.

And the family says out loud what it has taken. Leo Holt has stated that in 2024 the Gloucester Marine Terminal and the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal together handled over eighty-eight percent of the Chilean fruit on the entire East Coast, up from seventy-two percent the year before, and that while Moroccan citrus fell overall, his region’s share rose to seventy-six. Christian Holt, who handles sales and marketing for Holt Logistics, reports fruit volumes through those two terminals up nine point eight percent from 2023 to 2024 and twelve point five percent from 2024 to 2025, on bananas, grapes and pineapples from Chile, Costa Rica and Peru.

In 2025, Gloucester added Seaboard, Crowley and Greentide as carriers and built its refrigerated distribution center out to more than twenty-six thousand temperature-controlled pallet positions.

Sixteen points of the entire East Coast Chilean fruit trade moved into two terminals in a single year. Wilmington was the number one United States gateway for Chilean winter fruit. Every container that does not come through Edgemoor comes through Packer Avenue or Gloucester.

One Dollar A Year, For Thirty-Three Years

There is a second piece of public land in this story, and Holt has had it for a dollar.

In 1984 the Delaware River Port Authority, the bistate agency that runs the bridges between Pennsylvania and New Jersey, leased Holt roughly seven acres of public land beneath the Walt Whitman Bridge in Philadelphia, in connection with a wharf Holt was building at the Gloucester Marine Terminal across the river. The rent was nineteen thousand dollars a year, about fifty-seven thousand in today’s money.

In 1993 the Delaware River Port Authority cut Holt’s rent to one dollar a year. It did so as part of an unrelated deal. That same year the authority paid three million two hundred thousand dollars to buy out a competing container-transfer yard called Railport Incorporated, a company partly owned by the Holt family, and then opened its own yard, which had cost three million seven hundred thousand dollars to develop and had sat unused for more than a year.

The rent has been one dollar ever since. It has not been renegotiated in thirty-three years.

In 2022, the Delaware River Port Authority’s own inspector general reported that the lease had not been updated since 1993 and needed to be renegotiated at market rates. Nothing happened. In early 2025, the authority finally commissioned an appraisal. The appraisal set the market rent at three hundred thirty thousand dollars a year, and said the authority could probably command more. The parcel is comparable in size to Rittenhouse Square.

John Hanson, the authority’s chief executive, was asked why the lease had gone untouched for more than thirty years. He said it did not rise to a level of urgency that superseded the core business of the authority, and that he was not going to second-guess anything anybody did. Holt’s spokesman, Kevin Feeley, said the land had been literally created by Holt in the 1980s when it built the wharf, that Holt uses it as a roadway connecting two parcels it owns on either side, and that Holt looked forward to direct discussions with the agency.

It went further than a disagreement over rent. The New Jersey State Comptroller opened an investigation and subpoenaed the authority’s records, including the documents on the Holt lease. The authority fought the subpoenas. On March 17, 2026, a New Jersey judge ordered the Delaware River Port Authority to comply. The authority is separately appealing a federal court order in a related case. The office pressing the investigation is now run by Acting Comptroller Shirley U. Emehelu, appointed by Governor Mikie Sherrill, after her predecessor Kevin Walsh opened it.

Thirty-three years of a dollar a year on land, a 2025 appraisal valued at three hundred thirty thousand dollars a year. Public land, under a public bridge, held by the same family now spending four years in federal court to stop Delaware from building a public terminal. And in Delaware, the same family’s lobbyist has a marina on state parkland the State is about to buy for thirty million dollars.

Set the two side by side. In Philadelphia, Holt holds public land for a dollar and a public watchdog has to go to court to see the file. In Delaware, the State is preparing to hand thirty million dollars to a marina on public parkland whose managing agent is Holt’s registered Delaware lobbyist, and whose operator, the cabinet secretary who requested the money, told the legislature, has not paid the State in years.

XIX. The Man Who Files

The federal dockets tell you what this family does when something stands between it and cargo.

In the winter of 1993, the answer came three times in twenty-two days. On December 22, Holt Cargo Systems sued the International Longshoremen’s Association in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, case number 2:93-cv-06907. Eight days later, on December 30, Holt Hauling and Warehousing sued the same union in the same court, case number 2:93-cv-07059. Thirteen days after that, on January 12, 1994, Holt Cargo Systems sued the International Longshoremen’s Association again, this time across the river in New Jersey, case number 1:94-cv-00174. Nineteen ninety-three is also the year Holt replaced the International Longshoremen’s Association at Gloucester with a non-ILA union. A union leader called the Holts asinine and a disaster for union labor. It is the same year the Delaware River Port Authority cut Holt’s rent under the Walt Whitman Bridge to one dollar.

Understand who that defendant is. The longshoremen are the men who work the ships. In Wilmington they are the forty-five who hold the cold chain at four hundredths of a degree. In Philadelphia and Gloucester they are the same kind of men doing the same kind of work. In three weeks that winter, the Holt companies took them to federal court three times.

Four years later the target moved from the men to the landlords. On January 5, 1998, Holt Hauling filed against the Port of Philadelphia in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, case number 2:98-cv-00030. In the same season, Holt Cargo Systems sued the Delaware River Port Authority, carried it to the Third Circuit, and drew an opinion out of that court on January 20, 1999.

In March 2002, Holt Hauling and Warehouse Systems filed against Gloucester Marine Terminal in the Delaware bankruptcy court, case number 02-02203. In October 2016, Gloucester Terminals sued Teamsters Local Union 929, case number 2:16-cv-05322. In November 2023, Greenwich Terminals sued the Army Corps. In July 2026, it sued them again.

Unions when labor is the obstacle. Port authorities when a competitor is the obstacle. Federal regulators when a permit is the obstacle. Same instrument, three decades, every time the obstacle is an institution rather than an invoice.

Two things belong in the same breath, because they are true and because leaving them out would be the cheapest kind of writing.

Most of the Holt name on a federal docket is the Holt name as a defendant, in injury and cargo claims, which is the ordinary weather of every marine terminal in America. And on October 28, 2024, a federal judge agreed with them.

He was right. He read the permit file, decided the government had cut a corner, said so to a judge, and was proved correct. That is not a nuisance suit. And every month the case ran, the fruit moved upriver.

One line closes the circle. The harbor authority Holt took to federal court in 1998 is the harbor authority his lawyers spoke for in 2024. When Philadelphia stood in his way, he sued Philadelphia. When Delaware stood in his way, he brought Philadelphia with him.

XX. What Crossed The Dock, Counted By Somebody Else

Every container that comes off a ship in this country generates a piece of paper filed with United States Customs. It names the vessel, the voyage, the foreign port, the farm that grew the fruit, the company that bought it, the number of boxes, the weight, the container, and the seal. It is public, and it does not care what anyone says at a press conference.

Chiquita Fresh North America has one hundred seventy-two thousand six hundred seventy-four of those on file, running back to October 19, 2012. Port Hueneme in California holds fifty-eight thousand six hundred forty-four of them, the most recent dated December 20, 2025. Wilmington, Delaware holds forty-five thousand nine hundred four, the most recent December 17, 2025. Port Everglades holds twenty-one thousand twenty-eight; Gulfport, nineteen thousand seven; Freeport, twelve thousand six hundred thirty-four. New Orleans holds seven thousand three hundred twelve and has taken none since September 2022. Miami holds one thousand three hundred seven. Tacoma holds seven hundred seventy-three and has taken none since 2015.

And then two lines that ought to stop a reader cold. Chester, Pennsylvania holds two thousand three hundred seventy-seven, the most recent dated July 21, 2025. Philadelphia holds one thousand nine hundred forty-three, the most recent dated August 5, 2025. Chiquita’s own address on the Wilmington paperwork is 101 River Road, Port of Wilmington, Wilmington 19801-5851.

In February 2026, Delaware was told the river had frozen, and that was why the fruit ships could not get in. There is no ice on the Delaware River on the twenty-first of July. The boxes were already going upriver in the summer.

Here is one of those pieces of paper in full, because a summarized bill of lading is nothing. The DOLE CHILE, international registry number 9185281, voyage 521N, carrier code GWFC, loaded at Moin in Costa Rica, unloaded at Wilmington, Delaware, Customs port code 1103. Six thousand one hundred twenty-five boxes of fresh pineapples. Eighty-eight thousand five hundred fifty kilograms. Four forty-foot refrigerated containers numbered OTPU6070541, FBIU5442575, CXRU1512429 and SILU7001141, under seals CBA3424149X, CBA3424160X, CBA3423114X and CBA3423106X. The shipper is a company called Exportaciones Nortenas in Grecia, Costa Rica. Somebody grew those pineapples. Somebody in Wilmington was supposed to unload them.

And another. The CHIQUITA EXPLORER, number 9304966, voyage 063N, out of Puerto Barrios, Guatemala, arriving December 2, 2025. Agronegocios Los Angeles, two thousand eight hundred eighty boxes of organic bananas, fifty-nine thousand nine hundred ninety kilos. A second bill from the same farm, another two thousand eight hundred eighty boxes, fifty-nine thousand five hundred thirty kilos. Agronegocios San Miguel Arcangel, one thousand nine hundred twenty boxes, thirty-nine thousand nine hundred ten kilos.

The ships keep their own count at this dock. In the manifest record available for this reporting, which runs through December 20, 2025, the DOLE COLOMBIA, international registry number 9185293, has three hundred thirty-five recorded calls at Wilmington. The DOLE CHILE has three hundred thirteen. The CHIQUITA DREAM, number 9399777, one hundred five. The CHIQUITA VOYAGER, number 9304978, sixty-two. The CHIQUITA EXPLORER, sixty-one. The CHIQUITA EXPRESS, number 9304758, fifty-five. The ROBIN 2, number 9399739, forty-nine. For every one of those seven ships, the most recent call recorded in that window falls between November 24 and December 8, 2025.

The United States government publishes the seal number on a container of pineapples that crossed this dock, and the name of the farm that grew them. That record exists whether or not anyone in Dover chooses to talk about it.

The Port of Wilmington parking lot empty on Presidents Day, February 16, 2026, the first in 30 years

The dredger. Thursday, April 2, 2026, 8:54 am at the Port of Wilmington, Delaware. "Rumors are one week to three, the first birth for Chiquita will be ready." "April 14, 2026, the first full ship to the Port of Wilmington started 7:00 am with 900 containers on it."

Dredging, Thursday, April 2, 2026, 8:54 AM. Port of Wilmington, Delaware

The Port of Wilmington parking lot empty on Presidents Day, February 16, 2026, the first in 30 years

1/5

XXI. What The Port Said Was Happening

Chiquita was discharging cargo at Chester, Pennsylvania, on July 21, 2025, and at Philadelphia on August 5, 2025. So the obvious question is what the Port of Wilmington was telling the public and its own board while that was going on.

The answer, in order, is ice, then a procurement dispute, then arrows.

February 2, 2026. The River Continued To Freeze.

Mike Evanko is Mid-Atlantic President and Chief Commercial Officer of Enstructure, the private company that operates the Port of Wilmington. On February 2, 2026, he told the board of the Diamond State Port Corporation that the Delaware River continued to freeze, and that the best-case scenario would be a rain event to clear the ice so that dredging could resume.

Seven days later, on February 9, 2026, the United States National Ice Center published its satellite analysis of the region. It showed the Delaware and Christina Rivers at thirty percent ice coverage or less.

Truthline reporting published on February 18 and again on February 23. On February 27, nine days after the first of those, a hydraulic cutterhead dredge appeared in the Christina River and was photographed working in clear open water with the Interstate 495 bridge behind it.

March 23, 2026. A Procurement Dispute.

Enstructure’s next presentation to the board attributed the delay to a procurement dispute under a federal procurement process.

Maintenance dredging of the berths is not federal work. The United States Army Corps of Engineers maintains the Wilmington Harbor federal channel and spent $27.6 million on Delaware River maintenance in the winter of 2025 and 2026. The Diamond State Port Corporation maintains Berths 1 through 4 at thirty-eight feet and Berths 5 through 7 at thirty-five feet. That obligation is Delaware’s, filed by Delaware, in Delaware’s own 2021 Federal Consistency Certification with the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, at seventy-five thousand cubic yards a year for ten years, using the State’s own word for the relationship: concurrently.

The Corps performed. Delaware did not. The dispute resolved within forty-eight hours of publication.

April 2026. An Accomplishment.

The April board presentation lists Finalized Dredging as an accomplishment, and describes working with the port corporation, the State, the Corps and a dredging provider to maintain operations through Christina River dredging. No ice. No procurement dispute. No record that either had ever been claimed.

Three explanations in ten weeks. Ice the federal government’s own satellites could not find. A procurement dispute that evaporated forty-eight hours after a reporter published. And then an accomplishment. The only constant was that nobody dredged the berths for a year.

And The Numbers Stopped, On A Curve

Enstructure did not stop reporting cargo figures all at once. It stopped by degrees, over eleven months, and the sequence sits on the Diamond State Port Corporation’s own website in eight board presentations.

In August 2025, it reported breakbulk cargo up 1,874 percent year over year. In September 2025, up 2,063 percent. In December 2025, breakbulk up 468 percent, overall labor hours up 21 percent, container and bulk tonnage described as in line with the prior year. In February 2026, a comparison of one fiscal year against another. In April 2026, breakbulk up 16 percent year to date, with a conceded slight reduction in bulk tonnage and container volume.

The four-digit percentages were manufactured, and a footnote to those slides explains how. The figures were adjusted to exclude cargo deviated to Port Wilmington due to the Baltimore tragedy in March 2024. When the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed, ships that could not reach Baltimore came to Wilmington. Enstructure removed that windfall from the prior-year baseline and left it out of the comparison. Strip a good year out of the denominator and an ordinary year looks like a boom.

Then, on July 15, 2026, the board was shown a slide headed Volumes have improved compared to last quarter. Beneath it, a table of six lines. Vessels. Containers in TEUs. Bulk in metric tons. Break bulk in metric tons. Auto RoRo. Liquid.

Beside each one, an arrow. Green pointing up for containers, break bulk, Auto RoRo, and liquid. Grey pointing down for bulk. A flat blue bar for vessels. Not one number.

On the right half of that same slide, in three grey circles, the labor figures are given to the percentage point. Stevedoring hours, plus 3 percent. Warehousing hours, plus 6 percent. Training hours, plus 88 percent.

Labor hours got numbers. Cargo got arrows. And the comparison was the second quarter of 2026 measured against the first, the quarter the berths shoaled and the ships went to Chester. They benchmarked against the collapse and called it improvement.

The Season Nobody Counted

The Port of Wilmington was the country’s leading gateway for Chilean winter fruit. From December through April, the grapes, cherries, plums, nectarines and apricots come north, and for nine consecutive seasons this port received the first breakbulk shipment of the Chilean season to arrive anywhere in the United States.

Here is the entire public accounting of the 2025 to 2026 Chilean season, taken from the operator’s own board presentations. On February 2, 2026: delivering uninterrupted fruit season operations while supporting regional winter preparedness, strong volumes in the ongoing Moroccan clementine season, and Chilean fruit season began in Wilmington the week of January 27th, including successful fumigations. On March 23, 2026: completed multiple successful fumigations for Chilean grapes, working closely with the International Longshoremen’s Association. On April 20, 2026: Finalized Fruit Season; last Chilean grapes vessel of the 2025-2026 fruit season finished discharging in early April. On May 22, 2026: nothing.

Not one ton. Not one case. Not one vessel count. An entire season described in adjectives.

Uninterrupted. That word went in front of the board on February 2, 2026. Fourteen days later, the Chiquita gate and yard were closed on Presidents’ Day, a day the port’s own published Tariff Number 1J classifies as an Overtime Holiday, meaning a working day. The men who had worked that shift every year for thirty years were told there was no work.

There is one more line on that February slide. Under the heading Delaware Highlight, Enstructure reported that it had partnered with Agile Cold Storage to utilize the Claymont, Delaware facility for storage of certain fruit cargoes. Agile Cold Storage is the one hundred seventy million dollar facility Matt Meyer welcomed as County Executive in 2023 with four and a half million dollars in state grants. It will create roughly one hundred thirty jobs. None of them are International Longshoremen’s Association jobs.

The operator told the board the fruit season was uninterrupted. Fourteen days later, the longshoremen were home, and the fruit was in Pennsylvania. In the same season, Chilean fruit was moved into a non-union warehouse in Claymont, and the operator listed it on the slide as a Delaware highlight.

Three Pages, And Which One They Chose To Edit

Open portwilmington.com today and read the Fresh Fruit page. Then check when it was last edited. September 25, 2023. Eight weeks after Enstructure took over operations. It has not been touched in thirty-four months, and it still tells the public that Dole Fresh Fruit Company and Chiquita Fresh North America have made Wilmington the number one banana port in North America, that they each call Wilmington twice weekly year-round, that this is the number one United States gateway for imports of fresh fruit and the leading port of entry for Chilean winter fruit, that the port typically receives over sixteen million cases of fresh Chilean fruit annually, and that it holds eight hundred thousand square feet of dockside cold storage in six warehouses.

Now open the Auto and RoRo page on the same website. Last modified June 3, 2026. So the site is maintained. Somebody at Enstructure edits it when Enstructure wants it edited. (To the confidential sources working with this investigative reporter and publisher, note that June 3, 2026 date, and the date of our phone calls and text messages, just saying.) Here is what that June 2026 edit left standing: Port Wilmington is a busy automobile terminal on the Delaware River. Six car carriers listed as calling Wilmington. AutoPort, Inc., an ISO 9001 certified vehicle processing and modification company, customizes GM exports as well as other commercial vehicles at a facility adjacent to the Port, in the present tense. And one hundred forty contiguous acres, a sixty-acre surge parcel, and a sixty-five-acre build-to-suit waterfront site advertised as available.

Then open port.delaware.gov. The Diamond State Port Corporation still tells the public that the Port of Wilmington handles more than four hundred vessels and six million tons of import and export cargo annually, with ten berths, one million square feet of cold storage and ambient warehousing, and more than two thousand reefer plugs. The last independently published verified count for this port was 624 vessel arrivals and 6,603,444 tons. That was 2018.

They edited the automobile page in June 2026 and left the fruit page frozen at September 2023. They updated the one where the collapse is hardest to see and left alone the one where the numbers would have had to change. And the State is still publishing 2018 volumes as current.

Pigeon Point Road

AutoPort has processed vehicles at 203 Pigeon Point Road since 1981 and has moved more than four million cars across that dock. General Motors, Stellantis, Ford, Honda, Volkswagen. Höegh Autoliners, Liberty Global Logistics, Hyundai Glovis, Grimaldi. The Auto and RoRo berth was built for that business in 2002 at a cost of twenty-seven and a half million dollars, and sixteen and a half million of that loan was forgiven by House Bill 305 in February 2024.

A person with direct knowledge of the company’s decision says AutoPort is not coming back to the Port of Wilmington.

Thirty to forty ships have left this port for Baltimore and New York. Trans Cargo lost its work at 170 Pigeon Point Road in late 2025. In May 2024, Catalyst, a New York private equity firm, paid four and a half million dollars for 350 Pigeon Point Road.

And the Diamond State Port Corporation has held an option to acquire or control the Pigeon Point property since 1995, available for no additional consideration, and has extended it six times without ever exercising it. Resolution 25-06 in May 2025 was the fifth. Resolution 26-01, on the March 2026 agenda, was the sixth. Thirty-one years of a free option over the ground where AutoPort operates.

In June 2026, the operator updated its own website and left the words busy automobile terminal standing at the top of the page. In July, the board was shown a green arrow pointing up beside the line marked Auto RoRo. And a person with direct knowledge says the company that has processed four million cars there since 1981 is not coming back.

Eight Months Earlier

On June 5, 2025, Governor Matt Meyer posted to Facebook that he was excited to share some appealing news: that Chiquita had renewed its partnership with the Port of Wilmington, that it meant real jobs, real revenue, and real momentum, and that the Port’s future was ripe with possibility. He included a banana emoji.

The Chiquita agreement covers two hundred seventy thousand tons of bananas, roughly fifty-two vessel calls a year, and a relationship that has run thirty-seven years. Enstructure Co-Chief Executives Matthew Satnick and Philippe De Montigny called it a significant milestone and thanked the State and Local 1694.

The Governor announced the renewal in June with a banana emoji. By February, the ships were unloading in Chester, the holiday shift was cancelled, and the operator was telling a public board the river had frozen.

XXII. The Corridor

Stand on the Edgemoor Road overpass at the Interstate 495 interchange, and you are standing in the middle of it. The corridor runs along the river from the Pennsylvania line down to the Port of Wilmington, out past the Wilmington and New Castle County Airport, and along the rail line through Newark and Bear to Middletown. Deep water, an airport, a rail line and an interstate, all within a short truck run of each other. That is why the land there is worth what it is worth.

The biggest of Amazon’s Delaware buildings sit on that ground. The fulfillment center at 1025 Boxwood Road in Wilmington, three point eight million square feet and roughly three thousand workers, the largest building the company operates in this state. The sortation center at 801 Boxwood Road. Delivery stations at 851 Boxwood Road and at 2421 Bear Corbitt Road in Bear. And the warehouse ground now moving in Middletown. Every parcel along that run, and every industrial site built or subsidized to feed it, is worth more the day a deep-water container terminal opens at the top of the road.

Harvey, Hanna and Associates built a great deal of it, though not all of it. E. Thomas Harvey the Third and Thomas J. Hanna, known as T.J., teamed up in 1997 and turned a boutique real estate firm in Newport into one of the largest development companies in Delaware, out of family businesses going back to 1937 that began in waste hauling. Today the firm holds close to four million square feet of warehouse space in Delaware, and T.J. Hanna has overseen development and management of more than six million square feet of commercial space across the mid-Atlantic and hundreds of millions of dollars in financing and sales. A University of Delaware graduate, he was, in his own industry’s words, instrumental in converting the former General Motors Boxwood plant into a site that today holds one of the largest Amazon facilities in the country. In 2008, he founded the Delaware KIDS Fund, renamed Sam’s KIDS in 2023. He stepped back from day-to-day operations at the firm in 2025. Other developers are in this corridor too.

Dermody Properties, the national industrial developer, bought eighty-eight acres of the Boxwood Road site from Harvey Hanna and built for Amazon. EQT Real Estate sold Harvey Hanna the Middletown ground. Benchmark Builders and Eastern States Development Company, Leon N. Weiner and Associates and others hold their own positions along the same road. What distinguishes Harvey Hanna is not that it built everything. It is who it knows. Alan Levin and T.J. Hanna are close, and Levin was appointed Director of the Delaware Economic Development Office by Governor Jack Markell in 2009, the office that decided which companies got state money to build in Delaware and where.

The Boxwood Road site is the one everybody knows. General Motors built cars there for generations, and when the plant closed, the land sat dead. Harvey Hanna bought the hundred forty-two acres in October 2017, drew up four distribution centers including one of a million square feet, sold eighty-eight acres to Dermody Properties in November 2019, and the rest early the next year. It is now Amazon’s largest facility in Delaware, three point eight million square feet at 1025 Boxwood Road, roughly three thousand people inside. A sortation center sits at 801 Boxwood Road. Delivery stations sit at 2421 Bear Corbitt Road and 851 Boxwood Road.

The rest of the portfolio reads like a map of the same corridor. Twin Spans Business Park in New Castle, on the old Chicago Bridge and Iron site. Delaware River Industrial Park, near the port. Creekwood Corporate Center off Interstate 95. Corporate Commons.

Newport Industrial Park and a good deal of downtown Newport. In June 2026 an entity called Route 40 LLC, owned by Harvey Hanna, won one point one four million dollars in state transportation grant money for ten and a half acres at 600 Pulaski Highway in Bear, to put up two warehouses totaling one hundred nineteen thousand thirty-one square feet. In July 2026, the firm paid twenty-five point three million dollars for one hundred three acres at Jamison Corner in Middletown, approved for one point three million square feet across three buildings near the Route 301 interchange, its first major deal south of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal.

And the firm has said who helped. Ryan Kennedy of Harvey Hanna, describing the work of keeping a Delaware tenant in Delaware, credited a collaboration that ran, in his words, from Alan Levin and Bernice Whaley at the Delaware Economic Development Office to Governor Jack Markell. Bernice Whaley was Levin’s deputy and succeeded him as Director in 2015. Thomas Hanna, as chief operating officer, and Bert Root, as director of commercial leasing, ran the negotiations. The attorney on the firm’s Middletown land work is Shawn Tucker, the same Shawn Tucker who is a partner at Barnes and Thornburg LLP, a registered lobbyist for the Diamond State Port Corporation since March 17, 2023, the former General Manager of New Castle County Land Use, and a contributor of one thousand two hundred dollars to Governor Matt Meyer in October 2024. John C. Fannin the Third, formerly the firm’s president and now executive adviser to its board, sits on the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce Board of Governors.

What The Firm Says It Is Building Now

Harvey, Hanna and Associates lists its current work by name on its own website at harveyhanna.com, out of an office at 302-323-9300 in Newport. The catalog is five projects and a sixth heading called Future Projects. Delaware River Industrial Park in New Castle. Twin Spans Business Park. Newport Industrial Park in Newport. The Boxwood Road Redevelopment in Wilmington. And Lighthouse Cove in Dewey Beach. The firm describes itself as offering three million square feet of prime-location real estate to the mid-Atlantic region, with an occupancy rate above ninety-five percent.

There is a second arm to the company, and it points south. With a partner firm called TKO Hospitality, Harvey Hanna develops, owns, and manages hotels. It was owner and developer of the Hyatt Place Dewey Beach, which opened in 2013 as part of Lighthouse Cove and was the first Hyatt-branded hotel in Delaware. It developed the Hyatt House Lewes and Rehoboth Beach in 2021. It is a co-owner of the Hyatt Place Kent Narrows and Marina, which opened in 2022 on the Chesapeake in Maryland. And it bought the old Sand Castle Motel and reopened it as COAST Rehoboth Beach, a Tapestry Collection by Hilton property.

Hold those addresses next to Alan Levin’s. Levin divides his time between Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach. Since 2015, he has been Senior Advisor to SoDel Concepts, the Sussex County restaurant and hospitality group with a dozen restaurants in the same beach towns where Harvey Hanna builds and runs hotels. The industrial corridor at the top of the state and the hospitality corridor at the bottom of it are the same two men’s working ground.

A development firm whose partner was instrumental in turning the old General Motors plant into Amazon’s largest Delaware building, and whose hotels sit in the same beach towns where the chairman of Delaware’s revenue council advises a hospitality company. One state, two hundred miles long, and a very small number of people in it.

When Governor Jack Markell’s office announced on April 30, 2015, that Alan Levin was leaving the Delaware Economic Development Office, the release listed the companies that had come to Delaware or grown there on his watch. Amazon is the first name on the list. His deputy, Bernice Whaley, was confirmed to succeed him. Levin’s last day was June 30, 2015. He went from there to the law firm Drinker Biddle and Reath as Of Counsel, where Thomas McGonigle, Shawn Tucker and Douglas Gramiak also worked, and to SoDel Concepts, the Sussex County restaurant and hospitality group founded by his late friend and mentor Matt Haley, as Senior Advisor. SoDel Concepts president Scott Kammerer, announcing Levin’s recognition as one of the Most Influential Delawareans, said of him that he had played a pivotal role in the growth of Amazon in the state. That is not a critic’s characterization. That is his own employer’s press release.

Alan Levin ran Delaware’s economic development office when Amazon came to Delaware. Alan Levin chaired the task force, appointed by then County Executive Matt Meyer in October 2019, that recommended against renewing the county’s lease on the Wilmington and New Castle County Airport, the airport the Delaware River and Bay Authority has confirmed Amazon approached about an air hub. And Alan Levin now chairs the council that certifies how much money Delaware is allowed to spend on the port at the top of the same road.

XXIII. The Rule Written After The Fact

Nineteen days after the Governor signed the bond bill, and thirteen days after he struck the one line out of it he could not justify, he signed an executive order about escheat money.

The Fiscal Year 2027 Bond Bill, House Bill 500, created a legislative task force on unclaimed property, the fund that has now paid for a container terminal and a marina. The bill sets out how it is staffed. Senate President Pro Tempore David Sokola and Speaker of the House Melissa Minor-Brown each appoint a legislator from the majority, and one from the minority, and each appoints two members of the public. The Secretary of State, the Secretary of Finance, and the Controller General sit on it, or send designees. And Governor Matt Meyer sends a representative from his own office.

On July 16, 2026, Governor Meyer’s office announced that he had signed an executive order establishing enhanced conflict-of-interest standards for executive branch members serving on that task force. The Governor’s own press release, issued by Deputy Press Secretary Jonah Anderson, calls it Executive Order 26. The Governor’s executive orders website publishes it under the number 25. Its full title, on the State’s own archive, is Safeguarding The Unclaimed Property Task Force From Conflicts Of Interest And Ensuring That Delaware’s Unclaimed Property Policy Is Written For The Public, Not For The Industry That Profits From It. It applies to exactly one body in Delaware state government.

Under its terms, an executive branch appointee is ineligible to serve if he or she holds what the order calls a covered financial interest reaching back five years. If an agency head or a designee worked in the unclaimed property industry in the five years immediately before appointment, that person is disqualified. Executive branch appointees must certify they hold no covered financial interest. The order directs the Department of State, run by Secretary Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez, to publicly disclose that conflict of interest information. And it asks the Senate and the House to apply the same standard voluntarily, particularly when they choose their four members of the public. It took effect immediately on signature. The task force must report its findings to the Governor by February 1, 2027.

Governor Meyer said, in his own release, that Delaware’s unclaimed property laws should be written for the people of Delaware, not for the industry that profits from them, and that the recommendations of the task force should be guided by the public interest, free from conflicts of interest, and focused on ensuring the unclaimed property system remains fair, transparent and accountable.

Two things about that. The task force was not his idea. It came out of the Fiscal Year 2027 Bond Bill and was not in the budget he proposed in January. And he told reporters he is generally not supportive of task forces, because many things you do with task forces, you can take a few minutes on technology and get the information you need. He then wrote a conflict of interest order for the one he did not ask for, governing the fund his own bond bill leaned on.

NUMBERING NOTE, FOR THE RECORD. The Governor’s press office announced this on July 16, 2026, as Executive Order 26. The Governor’s executive orders website serves it as Executive Order 25. And as of August 4, 2026, the index page of the Governor’s executive orders archive lists nothing above Executive Order 22, dated May 7, 2026, so Executive Orders 23, 24, 25 and 26 do not appear on the list at all, though the individual pages exist. It's cited as the order announced July 16, 2026, by its full title, and both numbers are noted. Do not pick one.

Read that last clause against the record in this report.

Michael Houghton is a retired Wilmington attorney with decades of experience in the unclaimed property industry. He chaired the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council for eight years. He chaired Delaware’s unclaimed property legislative task force in 2014 and 2015, the model Senate Majority Leader Bryan Townsend says the state intends to use again. On October 20, 2025, he sat at Buena Vista and named the unclaimed property cap out loud as one of two lines Delaware should watch. On March 16, 2026, he asked the Department of State for corporate revenue data it had not produced. On March 18, 2026, Governor Meyer removed him from the council by email. In May, he questioned Brian Devine, the port’s interim executive director, about where the additional one hundred ten million dollars for Edgemoor was coming from, and days later he was off the Port of Wilmington Expansion Task Force. The Meyer administration did not disclose that the money came from unclaimed property until late June.

If the Senate and House apply the Governor’s new standard when they pick their members of the public, the man who has asked about unclaimed property more persistently than anyone else in Delaware would be disqualified from the unclaimed property task force, by reason of having spent his career in unclaimed property.

He asked about the escheat fund in October and was removed in March. He asked where the port money came from in May and was gone in days. And in July, the Governor wrote an ethics rule for the escheat task force that would keep him off it.

Charles Elson, founding director of the University of Delaware’s John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance, called the order unusual. He said it would be expected that any of the Governor’s appointees would be free of conflicts and meet ethical standards, and that he found the necessity of issuing an executive order for this particular board a little surprising. Setting up a separate order for a joint executive and legislative commission, Elson said, seems almost like picking a fight with the legislature, and it does not suggest a very good light on the rest of the administration, suggesting the Governor has to issue an executive order to compel ethics from his own appointees.

Elson has a point that is checkable. Governor Meyer already signed an executive order on ethics and transparency shortly after taking office, Executive Order Number 3, requiring all state employees to demonstrate exemplary conduct and be honest and ethical in the performance of their duties. And Executive Order 25 is the first time he has written a conflict of interest policy for a legislative task force. He did not write one for the Delaware Nuclear Energy Feasibility Task Force, whose membership includes a vice president of PSEG, which owns five nuclear plants and operates three in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and a development director from the Exelon Corporation, the parent company of Delmarva Power.

Jonah Anderson, Deputy Press Secretary to Governor Meyer, said the Governor is confident in his cabinet’s ability to meet the standards and looks forward to the General Assembly applying the same conflict-free standards to their selections. Senate Majority Leader Bryan Townsend, who chaired the 2014 task force, said the Senate plans to keep appointing people from the private sector who have the requisite experience, and called the earlier task force a model of full, transparent discussion about Delaware’s third-biggest revenue source. House spokesperson Jenevieve Worley said the Speaker will choose people with expertise and knowledge who can contribute positively.

And The Fund Nobody Outside The Department Of Finance Can See

There is one more thing in this that belongs beside every escheat figure in this report. Delaware operates a special unclaimed property fund controlled by the Department of Finance. It has been drawn down twice to cover funding shortfalls on the Edgemoor container terminal, once by former Governor John Carney and once by Governor Matt Meyer. The Meyer administration has declined to disclose the fund’s balance.

Delaware will not say how much money is in the fund. It has taken money out of that fund twice for this terminal. And the ethics rule it wrote for the task force examining that fund would exclude the man who kept asking about it.

A Note On The Second Order And Why It Is Not In This Report

Twelve days later, on July 26, 2026, Governor Meyer signed Executive Order Number 23, amending Executive Order Number 18, the Delaware Permitting Accelerator he had signed on February 26, 2026. The amendment authorizes routine updates to the state’s priority infrastructure and housing permitting framework without a new executive order each time, and requires the Governor’s written approval and public publication of any procedural change. That order governs how Delaware speeds permits, which is the subject of separate Truthline reporting on Executive Order 18 and the developer network, and it is where it belongs.

XXIV. The Questions, And Who Holds The Answer

Every one of these has a document behind it, and every document is held by a named Delaware official.

To the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control: produce the Summit North Marina concession and lease, and the payment ledger showing what was owed and what was received in each year. How many dollars of unpaid rent does the thirty million dollar purchase forgive? Identify the claims the owners made against the Department, the demand, the date, the forum, and what counsel valued the exposure at. And state what the $750,000 paid to Summit North Marina Inc on September 21, 2021, and the $21,500 paid on February 13, 2020, were for, producing the contract or grant instrument behind each.

To the Office of Management and Budget: produce the appraisal supporting thirty million dollars for a leasehold and improvements on land the State already owns, and name who performed it. Name every party receiving public money under the purchase agreement executed pursuant to House Bill 500. And with the Department of Finance, publish the schedule of payments to Barnes and Thornburg LLP by matter, for the $13,719,480.19 the State Checkbook records, identifying which of those matters concern the Port of Wilmington.

To the Diamond State Port Corporation: produce the deed and settlement statement for the January 10, 2025 purchase of 701 Christiana Avenue, and identify every party paid out of the $2,850,000.

To the Governor: Your Secretary told the Bond Bill Committee the State has not made any money off the property. You said the purchase will yield significant revenue. Reconcile those with a number and a timeline. And state whether Michael Houghton’s removal from the council two days after his March question, and his resignation from the Port Expansion Task Force days after his $110 million question, were connected to either question.

To the Joint Committee on Capital Improvement: before the vote, was any member advised that the registered lobbyist for the selling entity is also the registered lobbyist for Holt Logistics Corporation, and that the entity and its affiliates had contributed to the Governor’s campaign? If so, by whom and when. If not, why not.

To the General Assembly: identify the member who introduced the Fiscal Year 2023 bond bill language substituting five signatures for the concurrent resolution that section 8783 requires, and the date it was added.

To the State Election Commissioner: do the October 2024 filings satisfy the responsible party disclosure requirement for non-individual contributors?

To the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council: publish the roll of members with their political contributions to the sitting Governor’s committees alongside it. Two current members gave the Governor’s political action committee a combined $107,800. And state whether the council was briefed on the $110 million port commitment or the $30 million marina purchase before it adopted the 98 percent appropriation limit and the extraordinary revenue figure the bond bill drew against. If it was, give the date and the name of the person who briefed it.

To the Department of Finance: publish the schedule of unclaimed property refunds paid in Fiscal Year 2026 that drove the $38.0 million write-down between the October and March forecasts, and state what the Department projects for refunds against the $614 million ceiling House Bill 500 established. And state which figure was adopted on October 20, 2025, as the Fiscal Year 2027 expenditure estimate, $7,554.6 million, as the minutes record, or $7,544.6 million, as the attached table and the December reconciliation both use, and correct the published record.

To the Department of State: on May 18, 2026, the Department confirmed on the record that the adopted revenue forecast does not account for House Bill 400. State the revenue effect of that bill and whether the 98 percent appropriation limit of $7,328.0 million would have been different had it been included.

Not one of these requires a subpoena, an investigation or a whistleblower. Every one requires a Delaware official to open a drawer.

XXV. What This Is Really About

It would be easy to read this as a story about a lobbyist. That reading is wrong, and it lets the wrong people off.

Darrell Baker did what Delaware law asks. He registered every client, on time, in the form required, ten times over eighteen years. The contributions were filed and posted. The reason this report can be written at all is that the disclosure system worked exactly as designed.

The failure is on the public side of the table.

Every fact in this report was available to the State of Delaware, for free, on the State’s own websites, before a single member voted on House Bill 500. The lobbyist registry. The campaign finance filings. The Secretary’s own testimony. The statute in Title 29. The monthly financial report mailed to every legislator by name. A staffer with a browser and twenty minutes could have assembled it.

Nobody did. The bill passed in the dark, in the small hours of July 1, and the Governor signed it on July 6.

None of this was hidden. It was published by the State, on State websites, in files the State updates every week. That is not a scandal of secrecy. It is a scandal of incuriosity, and this one costs thirty million dollars.

Delaware is a small state with a small government and an enormous amount of other people’s money moving through it. The only protection ordinary people have is that somebody in the room asks the obvious question before the vote instead of after it. On the night the bond bill passed, in a chamber holding a bill worth more than a billion dollars, nobody asked.

And none of that is why this report exists.

It exists because of a Monday morning in February when a parking lot on the Christina River was empty, and forty-five men who had held a cold chain inside four hundredths of a degree for most of their working lives were told there was nothing to unload, and a ship that should have been theirs was tied up eleven miles north in Chester being worked by strangers.

The people who benefit from this sequence have names and addresses, and this report has given you all of them. So do the people who lose from it. On the sixteenth of February, they stayed home.

Author’s Disclosure

This report is by Karen Hartley-Nagle, President of New Castle County Council from 2016 to 2024, whose prior Truthline reporting has documented the Port of Wilmington concession, the Edgemoor expansion and the Executive Order 18 developer network. Darrell J. Baker is a Delaware attorney admitted in 1983 and a registered lobbyist for ten clients. The documents named in Section XXII are held by named Delaware officials, and every one of them can be released today.

Questions Readers Are Asking

Who paid Matt Meyer's campaign during the Edgemoor port fight?

Both sides of it. Delaware campaign finance filings for Meyer for Delaware, account 01005311, record $12,400 across roughly 5 weeks in the autumn of 2024. On October 30, 2024, Leo Holt, president of Holt Logistics Corporation, gave $1,200, two days after his companies won the case. On October 29 and 31, 2024, four companies registered at Summit North Marina and a Rockland post office box gave $2,800. On October 7, 2024, Darrell J. Baker, the registered Delaware lobbyist for both Holt Logistics Corporation and Summit North Marina LLC, gave $1,200. In the same period, the four registered lobbyists for the Diamond State Port Corporation, their firm Barnes and Thornburg LLP, two of their spouses, and Stradley Ronon Stevens and Young, litigation counsel to PhilaPort, also contributed. The Diamond State Port Corporation side accounts for $6,000, the Darrell J. Baker side for $5,200, and Stradley Ronon Stevens and Young for $1,200.

What did House Bill 500 do for the Port of Wilmington and Summit North Marina?

House Bill 500, the Fiscal Year 2027 Bond and Capital Improvements Act, passed the Delaware General Assembly in the early morning hours of July 1, 2026, and was signed by Governor Matt Meyer on July 6, 2026, as Volume 85, Chapter 341, Laws of Delaware. It committed $110 million to the Port of Wilmington, gave $30 million to the Office of Management and Budget for Building and Land Acquisition so the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control could buy Summit North Marina, and raised the ceiling on unclaimed property revenue available to the General Fund from $554 million to $614 million, an increase of $60 million.

Why did Delaware buy Summit North Marina?

Summit North Marina operates at 3000 Summit Harbour Place in Bear, Delaware, on ground inside Lums Pond State Park that already belongs to the people of Delaware. Appearing before the Bond Bill Committee, Secretary Gregg Patterson of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control told legislators the State had not seen payment from the operators for a number of years, that the owners had made claims against his Department, and that the State has not made any money off the property. Governor Matt Meyer called the marina a critical state asset and said the purchase will yield significant revenue. Four companies registered at that marina and at a related post office box contributed $2,800 to his campaign across three days in October 2024.

Why was Michael Houghton removed from DEFAC?

Michael Houghton, a Wilmington attorney, chaired the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council for 8 years. On October 20, 2025, he named the Corporate Franchise Tax and the unclaimed property cap as the two lines to watch if Delaware kept forecasting deficits. On March 16, 2026, he asked the Delaware Department of State for corporate revenue figures it had not produced. Two days later, on March 18, 2026, an email from Governor Matt Meyer's office ended his service. There was no hearing, no cause stated, and no public announcement. Weeks after that, he questioned the interim executive director of the Diamond State Port Corporation about where an additional $110 million for Edgemoor was coming from, and within days he left the Port Expansion Task Force.

What is Delaware unclaimed property, and how did it pay for the port?

Unclaimed property, also called escheat, is money left behind in forgotten accounts, uncashed dividends, and unclaimed shares, much of it belonging to the roughly 2 million business entities incorporated in Delaware. It is one of the State's largest revenue sources. Nearly $200 million of it moved to the Diamond State Port Corporation in January 2025. Delaware's own Economic and Financial Advisory Council then cut its net escheat forecast 5 times in 8 months, by $70 million in total, because refunds to the rightful owners were rising, reaching $203,701,388 in Fiscal Year 2026 against $128,038,529 the year before, an increase of 59.1 percent. House Bill 500 then raised the ceiling on that same fund by $60 million.

Who is Alan Levin and what is DEFAC?

The Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council, known as DEFAC, is a panel of roughly 30 appointed members that votes to adopt Delaware's official revenue and expenditure estimates. Under Article VIII, section 6(b) of the Delaware Constitution, appropriations may not exceed 98 percent of that revenue estimate, and a rule in force since 1991 caps new tax-supported debt at 5 percent of it, so DEFAC sets the ceiling on the entire state budget and on the bond bill. Alan B. Levin, the former Chief Executive Officer of Happy Harry's, former Director of the Delaware Economic Development Office, and former Chairman of the Diamond State Port Corporation board, was appointed chairman by Governor Matt Meyer without having served a day on the council. Across 4 published sets of minutes covering the fiscal year in which the port received $110 million, the council never once said the word port.

Why did the Port of Wilmington lose the Chiquita ships?

The berths at the Port of Wilmington sit on the Christina River at 35 to 38 feet, while the main channel of the Delaware runs 45 feet deep, and a loaded ship that clears the channel cannot clear the berth. With the port undredged and its berths shoaled, the Chiquita ships that had called at Wilmington for 37 years went 11 miles upriver to Chester, Pennsylvania. On Monday, February 16, 2026, the parking lot at the Port of Wilmington was empty on Presidents Day for the first time in 30 years, and the 45 men of Local 1694 of the International Longshoremen's Association, who held the temperature of banana cargo inside four hundredths of a degree and made Wilmington the second largest banana port on earth after Antwerp, stayed home.

Was anything in this report illegal?

The report does not allege a crime. Every contribution it documents was filed and posted as Delaware law requires, and Darrell J. Baker registered all 10 of his lobbying clients on time over 18 years. Delaware caps contributions to a statewide candidate at $1,200 under 15 Del. C. section 8010 and contains no rule aggregating contributions from limited liability companies under common ownership, so 5 companies at 2 addresses could lawfully reach $5,200. The report's argument is that the disclosure system worked, the records were public on State websites before the vote, and nobody in Delaware government read them.

What's Here. What's Coming.

The Truthline Network Publication Attachments List for This Report

For the growing number of readers who enjoy deep dives, explainers, and additional information, below are PDFs that supplement this report.

[PDF] Governor Matt Meyer, Executive Order 16, [date]

[PDF] Governor Matt Meyer, Executive Order 18 [date]

[PDF] Governor Matt Meyer, Executive Order [number, date]

"The Quiet Dismantling of Delaware's Democratic Guardrails." Governor Matt Meyer's Land Use Code Law Protections Override. Governor Meyer's Executive Orders 18 and Companion Executive Order 16. A must-read for every Delaware resident.

[PDF] County Executive Marcus Henry, Executive Order 2026-06 (County Executive Marcus Henry following Governor Matt Meyer's lead)

[PDF] Governor Matt Meyer, Executive Order [date] (NEW)

Discover The Truth About New Castle County Government's Covert Insider Dealmaking While Following County Council's Finance

Co-Chair George Smiley's Shady Dealings, Thievery, And Mischief Through The In-Depth Web Series

In 2001, James P. Hoffa, General President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and son of Jimmy Hoffa, reached down into Local 326 in Delaware and admonished one business agent for misrepresentation and misuse of union money. That business agent was George Smiley. The International's Executive Committee found him guilty of misrepresentation on appeal. Smiley paid the money back and lost his union post.

Michael J. Ciabattoni, a former president of Local 326, said it on the record to The News Journal in 2004: "If you want to say we had a vendetta because he was a crook, he's correct. I don't like thieves."

The Teamsters told the newspaper George Smiley was unworthy of their endorsement. Their own local endorsed his opponent. New Castle County elected George Smiley anyway.

Today, Councilman George Smiley co-chairs the Finance Committee of New Castle County Council, the committee that watches the county's money.

Twenty-three years after James P. Hoffa admonished him, the United States Tax Court described how developer Nicholas Ferrara Jr. brought a rezoning to Councilman George Smiley in 2006, and how by March 2007 Councilman Smiley was in favor. Six years later, 58 acres beside the New Castle County Airport, appraised at $6,900,000 as industrial land, rezoned to commercial in August 2012 and sold for $11,100,000 that December. $4,200,000 of that went to the developer's partnership for the political work.

The Tax Court was deciding a tax bill. Nobody put Councilman George Smiley's conduct before it. That question has never been asked by anyone with the power to answer it.

[PDF] T.C. Memo. 2024-59, Parkway Gravel Inc. and Subsidiaries v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue

[PDF] Truthline Memorandum, "The Tax Court Record: Ferrara, Smiley, and the Airport Corridor Rezoning Chain", Companion Document to “The Quiet Dismantling of Delaware’s Democratic Guardrails”

[PDF] Truthline Memorandum, "Twenty Years, One Councilman: The George Smiley File, The Tax Court Record, the Property Chain, and the Questions Nobody Has Asked", Companion Document to “The Quiet Dismantling of Delaware’s Democratic Guardrails”

Discover the Truth About New Castle County Government's Finances Through The In-Depth Web Series Below

1. "PART I: The New Castle County Tax Reckoning" (Released July 20, 2026)

2. "PART II: The New Castle County Tax Reckoning" (To be released August 8, 2026)

3. "Companion Report: Chapter 1" (To be released August 2026)

4. "Companion Report: Chapter 2" (To be released August 2026)

5. "Companion Report: Chapter 3" (To be released August 2026)

6. "Companion Report: Chapter 4" (To be released August 2026)

7. "Companion Report: Chapter 5" (To be released August 2026)

"One Two-part report. Five Companion Reports. One investigation.

Three audiences. One truth."

Discover The Truth About Port of Wilmington, Delaware Deals, Litigation, and Lies Through the In-Depth Web Series Below

1. "Everyone in the Fight Paid the Man Who Would Decide It" (Released August 6, 2026)

2. "Thirty Million for A Marina" (To be released August 2026)

3. "Three Port Deals: Name One" (To be released August 2026)

"A Three-report series. Two Delaware governments. Two Offices.

One investigation. Three audiences. One truth."

Discover The Truth About the Port of Wilmington Through The

In-Depth Web Series Below

1. "PART I: The Port They Left Behind" (To be released August, 2026)

2. "PART II: The Port They Left Behind" (To be released August, 2026)

"A Two-part report. Three Delaware governments. Ongoing investigation.

Three audiences. One truth."

Discover The Truth About How State and County Legislators Collude Through The In-Depth Web Series Below

1. PART I: Brookside Neighborhood Improvement District Critical Facts, Your Rights, Your Money (To be released August 2026)

2. PART I One-pager: Brookside Neighborhood Improvement District Critical Facts, Your Rights, Your Money (To be released August 2026)

3. PART II: Brookside Neighborhood Improvement District (To be released August 2026)

4. PART II One pager: Brookside Neighborhood Improvement District (To be released August 2026)

5. PART III: Brookside Neighborhood Improvement District (To be released August 2026)

6. PART III One pager: Brookside Neighborhood Improvement District (To be released August 2026)

7. PART IV: Brookside Neighborhood Improvement District (to be released August 2026

1. New Castle County Legislation on Neighborhood Improvement Districts (NID), Sponsored by New Castle County Councilwoman Kilpatrick

2. State of Delaware Legislation on Neighborhood Improvement Districts (NID), Sponsored by Senator Stephanie Hansen

"A Four-report series. Two colluding governments. Two investigations.

Three audiences. Remain vigilant. One truth."

A Note on Methodology and Sourcing

This supplement follows the same sourcing standards as all Truthline Reports. Every claim is traceable to a government document, court filing, campaign finance disclosure, published tariff, statutory text, or on-the-record statement from a named official. Where unnamed sources provide context, the underlying facts are independently verifiable through public records.

"We make it easy to verify. We make it hard to misquote."

RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Evidence File: Receipts, Sources, and Primary Documents

Everyone in the Fight Paid the Man Who Would Decide It. The Truthline Network. Karen Hartley-Nagle, Founder, Publisher, and Editor-in-Chief. Compiled August 5, 2026. All URLs verified as of August 4, 2026.

Citations follow the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, seventh edition. Legal materials, including court decisions, statutes, constitutional provisions, session laws, and executive orders, follow The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, as the seventh edition directs. Entries are grouped by category and alphabetized within each category.

158 documents. 9 the State would not produce.

Every document in this list was published by the State of Delaware, filed in a federal court, recorded by New Castle County, or issued by the United States government, except where the entry itself states otherwise.

Part I. What Delaware Would Not Produce

This list belongs in an evidence file for the same reason the sources do. It is the record of what the State holds and has not released, and it is the map for anyone who reads this after us. Each item below was sought in the reporting of this investigation and was not obtained.

NP-01. Minutes of the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council meeting of June 15, 2026. The worksheets adopted at that meeting are published. The minutes are not. Every other meeting in this cycle was minuted within 9 days.

NP-02. Roll call and actions history for House Bill 500. As of August 4, 2026, the General Assembly's bill detail page shows status Out of Committee, volume and chapter N/A, and empty roll call and actions tables, while the Governor's own legislative advisory records the bill as signed and enrolled.

NP-03. The balance of the special unclaimed property fund controlled by the Department of Finance, drawn down twice for the Edgemoor terminal.

NP-04. The appraisal supporting the $30 million valuation of the Summit North Marina leasehold and improvements.

NP-05. The Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control concession and lease for Summit North Marina, and the payment ledger showing amounts owed and received.

NP-06. The purchase agreement executed under House Bill 500, which must name every party receiving public money.

NP-07. The rating agency presentation dated April 8, 2026, cited by name and date as a source in the Kroll Bond Rating Agency surveillance report.

NP-08. The identity of the independent auditor of the Diamond State Port Corporation, on whose report CliftonLarsonAllen LLP states its own opinion rests.

NP-09. The Jacobs Engineering Group technical reports of October and December 2025, prepared for the Diamond State Port Corporation and not released for public comment.

Part II. The Record

158 sources, numbered S-001 through S-158, in 14 categories. Compiled August 5, 2026. All URLs verified as of August 4, 2026. This consolidated list was prepared August 11, 2026.

Citations follow the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, seventh edition. Legal materials, including court decisions, statutes, constitutional provisions, session laws, and executive orders, follow The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, as the seventh edition directs. Categories are alphabetical. Entries are alphabetical within each category. Initial articles are disregarded in both orders, as APA directs. Each entry carries a permanent source number.

The report these sources support: https://www.karenhartleynagle.com/everyone-in-the-fight-paid

I. Campaign Finance And Lobbying Disclosure

S-001. Delaware Department of Elections, Campaign Finance Section. (2016-2026). Change Can't Wait PAC, account 02005278, 29 reports, June 17, 2021 through December 31, 2025 [Financial reports]. Retrieved August 4, 2026.

S-002. Delaware Department of Elections, Campaign Finance Section. (2016-2025). Change Can't Wait PAC, account 02005278 [Financial reports]. Contributions of Alan B. Levin: $5,000 (October 28, 2022), $5,000 (September 29, 2023), $15,000 (June 10, 2024); Michael Bloomberg, $250,000 (September 4, 2024). Retrieved August 5, 2026.

S-003. Delaware Department of Elections, Campaign Finance Section. (2016-2026). Citizens for a New Delaware Way, account 02006097, 6 reports, May 24, 2024 through December 31, 2025 [Financial reports]. Retrieved August 4, 2026.

S-004. Delaware Department of Elections, Campaign Finance Section. (2024-2025). Citizens for a New Delaware Way, account 02006097, and Citizens for a New Delaware Way Third-Party Advertiser [Financial reports]. Contributions of Phillip Shawe and TransPerfect Translations International totaling $1,300,000 across 5 contributions, June 13, 2024 to November 18, 2025. Retrieved August 5, 2026.

S-005. Delaware Department of Elections, Campaign Finance Section. (2019-2024). Hynansky and Capano contributions across Meyer-linked committees, including the contribution of $25,000 filed June 8, 2023 under the name John Hyanski [Financial reports]. Retrieved August 5, 2026.

S-006. Delaware Department of Elections, Campaign Finance Section. (2016-2026). Meyer for Delaware, account 01005311, 20 reports, January 1, 2022 through December 31, 2025, including the 8-day pre-general report covering October 8 to October 28, 2024 (521 line items) and the year-end report covering October 29 to December 31, 2024 (376 line items), filed January 23, 2025 [Financial reports]. Retrieved August 4, 2026.

S-007. Delaware Department of Elections, Campaign Finance Section. (2021-2024). Meyer for Delaware, account 01005311 [Financial reports]. Contributions of Alan B. Levin, $1,200 (December 18, 2021) and $1,200 (September 22, 2024); E. Thomas Harvey, $1,200 (December 18, 2021); Robin Harvey, $1,200 (December 18, 2021); Thomas Harvey, $1,200 (December 30, 2021); Thomas Hanna, $1,200 (January 3, 2022); Katherine Kinnard, $1,200 (January 4, 2022); Murray Dingwall, $1,200 (January 25, 2022). Retrieved August 5, 2026.

S-008. Delaware Department of Elections, Campaign Finance Section. (2016-2026). Meyer for New Castle County, account 01003643, 24 reports, February 7, 2016 through December 31, 2021 [Financial reports]. Retrieved August 4, 2026.

S-009. Delaware Department of Elections, Campaign Finance Section. (2016-2017). Meyer for New Castle County, account 01003643 [Financial reports]. Contributions of Alan B. Levin, $500 (April 18, 2016), $600 (October 14, 2016), $600 (December 7, 2017), several filed under the employer name Ellen and Alan Levin Family Foundation. Retrieved August 5, 2026.

https://elections.delaware.gov/

S-010. Delaware Department of Elections. (2026). Office of the State Election Commissioner, Anthony J. Albence, Commissioner, 905 South Governors Avenue, Suite 170, Dover, Delaware. Retrieved August 4, 2026.

S-011. Delaware Public Integrity Commission. (2026). Public Integrity Reporting System, employer authorization file [Data set]. Retrieved August 4, 2026.

https://pirs.delaware.gov/documents/EmployerAuthorizationCsv

II. Constitutional Provisions, Statutes, and Session Laws

S-012. Del. Code Ann. tit. 6, § 18-201 (certificate of formation; limited liability companies).

https://delcode.delaware.gov/title6/c018/sc02/index.html

S-013. Del. Code Ann. tit. 15, ch. 80, subch. II, § 8010 (campaign contribution limits).

https://delcode.delaware.gov/title15/c080/sc02/index.html

S-014. Del. Code Ann. tit. 29, ch. 87, subch. II, §§ 8780-8789 (Diamond State Port Corporation; § 8783 concurrent resolution requirement).

https://delcode.delaware.gov/title29/c087/sc02/index.html

S-015. Del. Const. art. VIII, § 6(b) (98 percent appropriation limit).

https://delcode.delaware.gov/constitution/index.shtml

S-016. H.B. 305, 152d Gen. Assemb. (Del. 2024) (forgiving $16.5 million of the Auto and RoRo berth loan).

https://legis.delaware.gov/BillDetail?LegislationId=130504

S-017. H.B. 400, 153d Gen. Assemb. (Del. 2026) (business entity fee and annual tax increases; 3/5 vote required under Del. Const. art. VIII, § 10; signed May 21, 2026; annual tax provisions retroactive to Jan. 1, 2026).

https://legis.delaware.gov/BillDetail/143069

S-018. H.B. 500, 153d Gen. Assemb. (Del. 2026) (Fiscal Year 2027 Bond and Capital Improvements Act; passed early hours July 1, 2026; signed July 6, 2026; 85 Del. Laws ch. 341).

https://legis.delaware.gov/BillDetail?LegislationId=143658

S-019. Office of the Governor of Delaware. (2026). Legislative advisory no. 46 (recording House Bill 500 signed July 6, 2026, volume 85, chapter 341).

https://governor.delaware.gov/legislative-advisories/legislative-advisories-46/

S-020. Rivers and Harbors Appropriation Act of 1922, § 11, 33 U.S.C. § 555; 33 C.F.R. § 207.800 (waterborne commerce reporting).

https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title33-section555

S-021. Rivers and Harbors Appropriation Act of 1922, § 11, 33 C.F.R. § 207.800 (implementing regulation).

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-33/section-207.800

S-022. 46 U.S.C. § 40501(f) (marine terminal tariff filing).

https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title46-section40501

III. Contemporaneous News Coverage And Trade Press

A. Reporting

S-023. American Journal of Transportation. (2026). Delaware River ports positioned for widespread growth (quoting Christian Holt, Holt Logistics).

https://www.ajot.com/

S-024. Associated Press. (2014, January). Hybrid offers $55M for bankrupt Fisker in bid war. The Seattle Times.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/hybrid-offers-55m-for-bankrupt-fisker-in-bid-war/

S-025. Associated Press. (2017, October 10). Harvey Hanna to acquire former General Motors Boxwood Road plant; sale price and redevelopment plans not disclosed.

No public URL. Document held in the Truthline file.

S-026. Baker, K. (2023, July 24). What Hunter Biden's emails reveal about his investment in now-defunct Fisker Automotive. Delaware Online and The News Journal.

https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/politics/2023/07/24/hunter-biden-emails-and-what-they-reveal-about-delaware-business/70420802007/

S-027. Delaware Business Times. (n.d.). Harvey, Hanna closes on GM plant.

https://delawarebusinesstimes.com/news/harvey-hanna-closes-gm-plant/

S-028. Delaware Business Times. (n.d.). How the deal for Delaware's largest building got done.

https://delawarebusinesstimes.com/news/the-deal-for-delawares-largest-building/

S-029. Delaware Business Times. (n.d.). Residents embrace Harvey Hanna's plans for Boxwood site.

https://delawarebusinesstimes.com/news/residents-embrace-harvey-hannas-plans-boxwood-site/

S-030. Delaware Business Times. (2024, December). Dole expands Port of Wilmington service.

https://delawarebusinesstimes.com/news/dole-expands-port-of-wilmington-service/

S-031. Delaware Business Times. (2025, June). Chiquita renews Port Wilmington lease.

https://delawarebusinesstimes.com/news/chiquita-port-wilmington-lease/

S-032. Delaware Business Times. (2026, May 4). Permitting Accelerator applications now available.

https://delawarebusinesstimes.com/news/permitting-accelerator-applications-available/

S-033. Delaware Public Media. (2013, March 7). Kinder Morgan suspends pursuit of Port of Wilmington lease deal.

https://www.delawarepublic.org/2013-03-07/kinder-morgan-suspends-pursuit-of-port-of-wilmington-lease-deal

S-034. Delaware Public Media. (2014, February 15). Wanxiang to acquire Boxwood Road plant after Fisker asset auction.

https://www.delawarepublic.org/2014-02-15/wanxiang-to-acquire-boxwood-road-plant-after-fisker-asset-auction

S-035. Delaware Public Media. (2015, April 30). Alan Levin out as DEDO director.

https://www.delawarepublic.org/politics-government/2015-04-30/alan-levin-out-as-dedo-director

S-036. Delaware Public Media. (2026, June 29). Coverage of the fiscal year 2027 bond bill vote.

https://www.delawarepublic.org/

S-037. Delaware Public Media. (2026, July 9). Coverage of the line item veto.

https://www.delawarepublic.org/

S-038. Delaware Public Media. (2026, July 14). Dover City Council opens door to clean hydrogen plants in city limits through ordinance change.

https://www.delawarepublic.org/politics-government/2026-07-14/dover-city-council-opens-door-to-clean-hydrogen-plants-in-city-limits-through-ordinance-change

S-039. Delaware Public Media. (2026, July 15). Philly port operators file new complaint over Port of Wilmington expansion, ask judge to halt project.

https://www.delawarepublic.org/politics-government/2026-07-15/philly-port-operators-file-new-complaint-over-port-of-wilmington-expansion-ask-judge-to-halt-project

S-040. Delaware Public Media. (2026, July 26). Gov. Meyer sets transparency rules for Delaware's unclaimed property task force.

https://www.delawarepublic.org/politics-government/2026-07-26/gov-meyer-sets-transparency-rules-for-delawares-unclaimed-property-task-force

S-041. Delaware Public Media. (2026, August 1). New complaint argues Diamond State Port Corporation and Enstructure agreements are void.

https://www.delawarepublic.org/politics-government/2026-08-01/new-complaint-says-agreements-between-the-diamond-state-port-corporation-and-enstructure-are-void

S-042. Delaware Public Media. (2026, August 4). Aternium plans clean hydrogen plant in Dover, but isn't counting on federal help.

https://www.delawarepublic.org/business/2026-08-04/aternium-plans-clean-hydrogen-plant-in-dover-but-isnt-counting-on-federal-help

S-043. DiStefano, J. N. (2020, February). Amazon's Boxwood Road warehouse and the $4.5 million subsidy [PhillyDeals column]. The Philadelphia Inquirer.

https://www.inquirer.com/business/phillydeals/

S-044. DiStefano, J. N. (2020, May 20). Amazon pledges plenty of robotics at former GM plant. The Philadelphia Inquirer.

https://www.inquirer.com/news/amazon-wilmington-robotics-state-subsidy-20200520.html

S-045. NBC News. (2009, October). Plug-in hybrid maker plans to use old GM plant.

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna33519286

S-046. The Philadelphia Inquirer. (2024, February 18). Coverage of the Delaware River Port Authority lease with Holt Logistics, the 1984 terms, the 1993 reduction, and the 2022 inspector general report.

https://www.inquirer.com/business/holt-logistics-philadelphia-port-truckers-competition-20240218.html

S-047. The Philadelphia Inquirer. (2025, February 13). Coverage of the appraisal valuing the Walt Whitman Bridge parcel at $330,000 annually.

https://www.inquirer.com/business/drpa-holt-logistics-lease-comptroller-20250213.html

S-048. The Philadelphia Inquirer. (2025, July 1). Coverage of the Crowley Central America service at the Gloucester City terminal.

https://www.inquirer.com/business/holt-crowley-imports-shipping-tariffs-fruit-20250701.html

S-049. The Philadelphia Inquirer. (2026, March 17). Coverage of the order requiring the Delaware River Port Authority to comply with New Jersey State Comptroller subpoenas.

https://www.inquirer.com/news/new-jersey/drpa-comptroller-subpoenas-judge-order-20260317.html

S-050. The Produce News. (2025). Holt has sights set on growth and sustainability (quoting Leo Holt on East Coast Chilean fruit share).

https://theproducenews.com/delaware-ports/holt-has-sights-set-growth-and-sustainability

S-051. Renewable Energy Magazine. (2026, August 5). Aternium picks Delaware for first U.S. heavy water and high-purity hydrogen production facility.

https://www.renewableenergymagazine.com/miscellaneous/aternium-picks-delaware-for-1st-us-heavy-20260805

S-052. Taylor, A., & Nathans, A. (2014, June 3). New Castle County to make offer on Boxwood plant. The News Journal.

https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/local/2014/06/03/new-castle-county-make-offer-boxwood-plant/9919635/

S-053. WHYY News. (2026, August 3). Delaware governor sets ethics standard for task force (Sarah Mueller, quoting Charles Elson, Jonah Anderson, Bryan Townsend, and Jenevieve Worley).

https://whyy.org/articles/delaware-gov-matt-meyer-ethics-unclaimed-property-task-force-executive-order/

B. Journalist Credentials and Author Records

S-054. DiStefano, J. N. (n.d.). Author page. The Philadelphia Inquirer.

https://www.inquirer.com/author/distefano_joseph_n/

S-055. The Nation. (n.d.). Joseph N. DiStefano, contributor biography.

https://www.thenation.com/authors/joseph-n-distefano/

S-056. Technical.ly Philly. (2011, November 11). Inquirer business columnist Joseph N. DiStefano on Philly tech [Interview].

https://technical.ly/philly/2011/11/11/inquirer-business-columnist-joseph-n-distefano-on-philly-tech-friday-qa/

IV. Corporate, firm, Organizational, And Biographical Records

S-057. Barnes & Thornburg LLP. (2021, June 14). Announcement of the hiring of Thomas McGonigle, Shawn Tucker, Michael Maimone, Mary Kate McLaughlin, Douglas Gramiak, Michael DeNote, Sawyer Traver, and Whitney Potts.

https://btlaw.com/en/news-events/

S-058. Delaware Prosperity Partnership. (n.d.). Amazon builds on 20-plus years of investments in Delaware.

https://www.choosedelaware.com/archives/amazon-invests-in-delaware-new-fulfillment-center/

S-059. Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP. (2026). Geoffrey A. Sawyer III, partner, Wilmington [Professional biography]. Retrieved August 5, 2026.

https://www.faegredrinker.com/en/professionals/s/sawyer-geoffrey-a

S-060. Gulftainer. (2018, September 18). Gulftainer signs 50-year, $600 million concession to operate and expand Port of Wilmington.

https://www.gulftainer.com/news/releases/gulftainer-signs-50-year-600-million-concession-to-operate-and-expand-port-of-wilmington-in-delaware-usa/

S-061. Harvey, Hanna & Associates. (2024). Complete 130,000 SF industrial space at Delaware River Industrial Park.

https://harveyhanna.com/harvey-hanna-associates-complete-130000-sf-industrial-space-at-delaware-river-industrial-park/

S-062. Harvey, Hanna & Associates. (2026). Hospitality. Retrieved August 4, 2026.

https://harveyhanna.com/hospitality/

S-063. Harvey, Hanna & Associates. (2026). Our work. Retrieved August 4, 2026.

https://harveyhanna.com/our-work/

S-064. Harvey, Hanna & Associates, Inc. (2025, March 31). E. Thomas Harvey III, executive biography [Corporate document].

No public URL. Document held in the Truthline file.

S-065. Holt Logistics Corp. (2026). Corporate information, 101 South King Street, Gloucester City, New Jersey. Retrieved August 4, 2026.

https://holtlogistics.com/

S-066. Niskanen Center. (n.d.). Delaware offered Amazon $4.5 million to locate a new facility there.

https://www.niskanencenter.org/op-ed-delaware-offered-amazon-4-5-million-to-locate-a-new-facility-there-guess-who-wins/

S-067. SoDel Concepts. (2026). Levin named to the list of most influential Delawareans [Press release, quoting president Scott Kammerer].

https://sodelconcepts.com/press/levin-named-to-the-list-of-most-influential-delawareans

S-068. State of Delaware, Delaware Economic Development Office. (n.d.). Hon. Alan B. Levin, Cabinet Secretary [Official biography].

No public URL. Document held in the Truthline file.

S-069. TKO Hospitality Management. (2026). Portfolio. Retrieved August 4, 2026.

https://tkohospitalitymgt.com/

V. Credit Rating and Bond Market Records

S-070. Fitch Ratings. (2026, April 15). Fitch rates Delaware's $452MM GOs 'AAA'; outlook stable.

https://financefiles.delaware.gov/Bond/Fitch_Series_2026_April_15_2026.pdf

S-071. Kroll Bond Rating Agency. (2026, May 6). State of Delaware, general obligation surveillance report (Doc. ID 1014848).

https://financefiles.delaware.gov/Bond/KBRA_Surveillance_May_6_2026.pdf

S-072. Moody's Ratings. (2025, April 11). Moody's Ratings assigns Aaa to Delaware's general obligation bonds; outlook stable (posted by the Delaware Department of Finance under the heading April Moody's 2026).

https://financefiles.delaware.gov/Bond/Moodys_Series_2026_April_11_2026.pdf

S-073. S&P Global Ratings. (2026, April 15). Delaware Series 2026A-B GO and GO refunding bonds assigned 'AAA' rating.

https://financefiles.delaware.gov/Bond/S%26P_Global_Series_2026_Apr_15_2026.pdf

S-074. State of Delaware, Department of Finance. (2026). Investor information and rating agencies' credit reports. Retrieved August 4, 2026.

https://finance.delaware.gov/financial-reports/rating-agencies-credit-reports/

S-075. State of Delaware. (2026, April 16). Summary notice of sale, general obligation bonds series 2026A and general obligation refunding bonds series 2026B.

https://financefiles.delaware.gov/Bond/Summary_NOS-Series_2026A_and_Series_2026B.pdf

VI. Executive Orders and Attorney General Opinions

S-076. Del. Att'y Gen. Op. 24-IB04 (Jan. 29, 2024) (Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control statement that Holt owned two appellants and that Holt's counsel represented the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority).

https://attorneygeneral.delaware.gov/opinions/

S-077. Delaware Executive Order No. 3 (2025) (ethics and transparency; requiring exemplary conduct of all state employees).

S-078. Delaware Executive Order No. 16 (2026) (Delaware Strategies for State Policies and Spending; 2026 State Smart Growth Visioning process).

https://governor.delaware.gov/executive-orders/executive-order-18/

S-079. Delaware Executive Order No. 18 (Feb. 26, 2026) (Delaware Permitting Accelerator).

S-080. Delaware Executive Order No. 23 (July 26, 2026) (amending Executive Order No. 18 to authorize updates to the Delaware Permitting Accelerator and to require publication).

https://governor.delaware.gov/executive-orders/executive-order-23/

S-081. Delaware Executive Order No. 25 (as served) / No. 26 (as announced) (July 16, 2026), Safeguarding the Unclaimed Property Task Force from Conflicts of Interest and Ensuring That Delaware's Unclaimed Property Policy Is Written for the Public, Not for the Industry That Profits from It.

https://governor.delaware.gov/executive-orders/executive-order-25/

S-082. Delaware Executive Order No. 62 (Aug. 27, 2024) (Governor Carney; constituting the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council; members serve at the Governor's pleasure; Governor designates chair).

S-083. Office of the Governor of Delaware. (2026). Executive orders archive index. Retrieved August 4, 2026.