Former Grand Bahama Chamber of Commerce President Dillon Knowles has offered a spirited defence of the Grand Bahama Port Authority (GBPA), but his arguments raise a troubling question: Is he defending Grand Bahamians’ interests, or carrying water for an institution whose stewardship of Freeport deserves serious scrutiny?
Knowles warns that the government’s proposed reforms could be “catastrophic” for investors. Yet he conveniently sidesteps an equally important question: What has the GBPA done with the enormous economic privileges, development authority and opportunities entrusted to it over seven decades?
Freeport’s deteriorating infrastructure, neglected commercial districts, declining economic vitality and increasingly unattractive investment environment did not emerge overnight. These conditions developed under a governance arrangement that Knowles now appears determined to defend.
His argument that the GBPA develops and maintains a 230-square-mile area at “zero cost to the public treasury” is particularly misleading. The absence of direct government expenditure does not mean the arrangement comes without economic costs to the Bahamian people.
The GBPA has benefited from extraordinary concessions and development privileges. Those advantages were never intended to constitute an entitlement without corresponding responsibilities.
Where is the accounting for the revenues generated, the resources allocated to infrastructure maintenance, and the investments necessary to preserve Freeport’s competitiveness?
More importantly, have resources that should have supported infrastructure and community development instead been diverted elsewhere? These are legitimate questions demanding independently verified answers, not carefully constructed distractions about investor uncertainty.
Knowles should demand transparency from the GBPA rather than treating its historical privileges as proof of responsible stewardship.
His suggestion that Freeport’s economic contribution justifies preserving the existing arrangement ignores a fundamental distinction: generating economic activity does not absolve an institution from accountability for deteriorating conditions within its jurisdiction.
Nor does invoking the sanctity of the Hawksbill Creek Agreement answer whether the GBPA has fulfilled the obligations accompanying its exceptional authority.
Nobody disputes that investors require certainty. But investors also require functioning infrastructure, attractive commercial environments, reliable services and competent administration.
What certainty do investors have when visible deterioration undermines confidence in the city’s future?
Knowles cannot credibly demand accountability from the government while treating the GBPA’s performance as virtually beyond examination.
The Davis administration must certainly explain its proposed reforms, protect legitimate investor rights and avoid replacing one unaccountable system with another.
But those concerns cannot become convenient cover for the GBPA’s failures.
If Knowles possesses evidence that the GBPA has properly reinvested the resources necessary to maintain and develop Freeport, he should produce it.
Otherwise, his intervention risks placing his public credibility and integrity on the line in defence of an institution facing serious questions about its stewardship.
Grand Bahamians deserve an independent accounting of the GBPA’s revenues, expenditures, land transactions, infrastructure obligations and development performance.
They deserve answers about why a city once celebrated as Grand Bahama’s economic engine has experienced such prolonged decline.
Freeport does not need another public relations defence of the GBPA. It needs transparency, accountability and results.
Anyone genuinely speaking for Grand Bahama should demand precisely that.
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