By Ashley Fletcher Frampton and Daniel Brock 
Published Aug. 27, 2010

When Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum borrowed $9.2 million from the state last year for emergency repairs to a historic Navy destroyer, its leaders said they were counting on a $20 million congressional appropriation to pay it back.

“If there’s ever been gross — I do mean gross — mismanagement of anything that I’ve ever seen in the state of South Carolina, it’s what’s been happening at Patriots Point.”

Patriots Point leaders said last week that they were working with U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., on the request, which would also pay some of the costs of returning the repaired ship, the USS Laffey, to the museum site on Charleston Harbor.

But Clyburn struck a blow to those plans this week, saying he “absolutely” will not support the request in Congress.

Clyburn, who is the U.S. House majority whip, went on to say that Patriots Point is mismanaged and that its leadership has made statements that were “tainted, real tainted.”

“If there’s ever been gross — I do mean gross — mismanagement of anything that I’ve ever seen in the state of South Carolina, it’s what’s been happening at Patriots Point,” Clyburn said, responding to questions about the request at a media roundtable Wednesday in Columbia.

A backlog of repairs
The historic Navy ship museum has struggled recently with the enormous costs of maintaining the decades-old ships, which are floating in salt water. State lawmakers set up the tourist attraction in the 1970s, planning for it to operate using money from visitors and income from leases on the surrounding 450 acres.

That operations money is not enough to cover the backlog of needed ship repairs, Patriots Point officials say. They asked for the $9.2 million state loan last year, saying they had no way to pay for repairs to the Laffey, which was on the verge of sinking.

Clyburn said Wednesday he never supported the $20 million request.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “I never did before — simply because I knew exactly what was going on down there.”

When asked what Clyburn meant by “tainted” statements, Hope Derrick, his communications director, responded in an e-mail, saying, “The leadership at Patriots Point lacks diversity and a sensitivity to issues of diversity, and the congressman has a problem with that.”

John Hagerty, chairman of the Patriots Point Development Authority board, said he did not know Clyburn’s position on the funding request.

“First of all, this is news to me, and I am very surprised by his lack of support or understanding of what is going on at Patriots Point,” Hagerty said.

Hagerty said he agreed that the board of Patriots Point could be more diverse and represent more parts of the state. Board members are appointed by the governor, the speaker of the S.C. House of Representatives, the president of the S.C. Senate and the state’s adjutant general.

But Hagerty said the current leadership of Patriots Point is dealing with a lack of financial planning that goes back 30 years. The Laffey situation brought those issues to the forefront, he said.

“For 30 years now, we have not had either a set-aside for the maintenance of these steel ships in salt water or any kind of legitimate plan to use the extraordinarily valuable land that was dedicated for that purpose,” said Hagerty, who has served on the board for six years. “And now, for the first time, Congressman Clyburn has a board that is telling him the bad news about the accumulated deficit associated with the failure to set aside money and is also proposing for the first time a workable master plan.”

A team of consultants last week presented to the Patriots Point board a master plan calling for development of the 367 acres of high ground. The plan envisons a mixed-use village that includes homes, office space and walking trails. The plan is meant to generate more revenue for Patriots Point over the long term.

Board members have not taken action on the plan. Last week, they asked consultants to come back with estimates on how much revenue it could produce.

Request for an audit
In his statements Wednesday, Clyburn also asked why no one had asked for an audit of Patriots Point by the S.C. General Assembly’s Legislative Audit Council.

S.C. Senate President Pro Tempore Glenn McConnell has asked for such an audit. McConnell sent a letter to Thomas Bardin, director of the Legislative Audit Council, on July 23, outlining his concerns with Patriots Point’s operations and a long list of questions he wants answered.

Bardin said the council’s board is scheduled to vote on the audit at its meeting on Wednesday.

The audit is something Patriots Point leaders say they welcome.

Patriots Point Executive Director Dick Trammell said at last week’s meeting that the audit could go a long way toward clearing the air about the issues facing the attraction, and he said it would bring new members of the board up to date on those issues.

Trammell announced Friday that he is resigning as director effective Dec. 31.

Hagerty said he, too, welcomes an audit. He said political finger-pointing has no value.

“People don’t want to hear this, but I can tell you it’s the same situation being faced by 38 different museums across the country, where 30 years of steel on saltwater has put them in the same position we are in,” he said.

Patriots Point had asked for the $20 million federal appropriation to pay back its $9.2 million state loan and to cover other needs. Among those is bringing the Laffey back, possibly to a new spot in the harbor that officials say is safer and is not inside the adjacent marina.

Getting ships in and out of marina infrastructure comes at high costs, officials say. But placing the Laffey in a different spot requires moorings, dredging and possible changes to the pier leading to the museum’s largest ship, the USS Yorktown.

Since June, Patriots Point has been renting temporary space for the Laffey at the Macalloy site on Shipyard Creek at a cost of $11,250 per month.

Reach Ashley Fletcher Frampton at 843-849-3129. Reach Daniel Brock at 843-849-3144.