Jeff Landry Names His Picks for Powerful State Port Board, Aimed at Collaboration
Louisiana governor announces his selections to “collectively address critical issues facing our ports.”
According to Nola, the new Louisiana Ports and Waterways Investment Commission, created this spring in the recent legislative session, is comprised of several heads of various public ports in the state, state lawmakers, economic development leaders and others.
It will be led by Marc Hebert, Landry announced in a Wednesday statement. Hebert is a New Orleans attorney who specializes in international trade, maritime and supply chain logistics law.
In an interview, Hebert, who was a member of Landry’s infrastructure transition council, said the singular board will foster collaboration among the state’s 29 active ports, instead of the competition that has been common in years past. That collaboration will lead to economic investment, he said.
“This is about not growing each individual port, per se, but the ports collaborating with the use of state funds to determine how we are growing the entirety of the pie,” Hebert said.
For decades, Louisiana’s ports have been operated by independent governing boards — an anomaly when compared to most other coastal Southern states, according to a January audit report on Louisiana’s public ports system.
The lack of coordination has created issues. In recent years, Port of South Louisiana Executive Director Paul Matthews spearheaded a failed $445 million bid to buy the former Avondale shipyard, a deal that took other ports and state officials by surprise and ultimately served as a catalyst for the effort to coordinate port plans.