COLUMBIA, S.C. - The State Ports Authority wants to keep secret rates it negotiates with its customers, an agency official said Thursday as lawmakers considered changing the Freedom of Information Act.

Ports Authority spokesman Byron White said the agency has the authority to negotiate rates under the Federal Maritime Commission regulations.

"We're in competition with Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and around the country," White said.

The authority's secretly negotiated rates came up during a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing Thursday as legislators considered House and Senate bills dealing with the Commerce Department and changes in the state's Freedom of Information Act.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Harrison amended the House version of the legislation during floor debate on Jan. 28 to say: "competitive rates quoted by a public body for service are not required to be disclosed."

Harrison did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment.

While White said the Ports Authority already has authority to keep its rates secret, he could not immediately say why the agency wanted that change.

When questioned during the hearing about the secret rates, Ports Authority lobbyist Barbara Melvin said the agency didn't need to disclose rates under trade secret protections in the FOI law.

"Explain to me how that section gives you the authority to protect it," Sen. Jake Knotts, R-West Columbia said.

Melvin said rates were a "commercially valuable formula."

However, Jay Bender, a Columbia lawyer and expert on the state's FOI law, told the subcommittee that the "formula" cited in the open records law exemption referred to how products are made. "It does not relate to the generation of rates," Bender said.

Bender questioned how secret the Ports Authority's rates are since shippers will comparison shop. The rates the state charges will be known by everyone in the business, but will not be known by taxpayers, Bender said.

If the Ports Authority wants to keep rates secret, it has to "show a compelling reason why it would not be in the interest of the people" to disclose them, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston, said.

"How can you judge the performance of the port and how it operates unless you have access to that information?" McConnell asked. "We have to have a measuring stick ... to see what they are doing with public resources."

Republican Gov. Mark Sanford thinks the rates could be made public after a deal is done. "Once a deal or decision has been made ... taxpayers have a right to know the particulars of that process," Sanford spokesman Will Folks said.

ON THE NET

House FOI bill: http://www.scstatehouse.net/sess115_2003-2004/bills/3208.htm

Senate FOI bill: http://www.scstatehouse.net/sess115_2003-2004/bills/34.htm