The Steamship Authority could hire a new general manager later this month after narrowing down a field of more than 130 candidates to two finalists, ferry line officials said this week. 

Steamship board of governors chair James Malkin detailed the search progress Thursday during an online meeting of the working group tasked with selecting finalists for the position. The announcement comes more than a year after general manager Robert Davis decided to step down in October 2025.

The next step in the process will be bringing the two finalists before the Steamship Authority board for public interviews later this month, boat line general counsel Terence Kenneally said. The names of the two finalists will be made public 48 hours before the interviews take place, Mr. Kenneally said.

“It’s required by law,” he told working group member Robert Munier, who had expressed concern about releasing the candidates’ names in advance because one of the two is already employed by the Steamship Authority.

“I think there will be some hue and cry about having one of the candidates being an internal candidate... because the immediate assumption is going to be that that’s the candidate that we really want,” said Mr. Munier, who represents Falmouth on the Steamship Authority’s advisory port council.

The names of all other applicants for the positions will continue to be held in confidence, Mr. Kenneally said.

The Steamship Authority had hired global search firm Faststream Recruitment to aid with the search. The consultant’s head of executive search Jonathan Pearse outlined how his firm identified the finalists.

“We looked at, profiled and or reached out to 131 candidates,” he said.

The firm collaborated with the working group to narrow the field to about 30, then six and finally two.

Ninety-two members of the initial pool were targeted by Faststream, while the other 39 applicants responded to the firm’s advertising, Mr. Pearse said.

Ten per cent of the total were women, he said, but those out of the 13 who chose to go forward with applications wound up dropping out of the process,leaving no female candidates.

The general manager position is the highest staff role in the Steamship Authority, which operates ferries from Cape Cod to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket and handles a budget north of $130 million annually.

A number of promising candidates dropped out because they were discouraged by the often rancorous commentary targeting the Steamship Authority in social media and the press, Mr. Pearse said.

“There was a perception that this is a politically charged environment [and] for some, they found that was maybe a step too far,” he said. 

One candidate commented that the job was “not for the faint-hearted,” Mr. Pearse said.

“That’s flippant, but really I think the headwind there was people thinking, ‘What, am I going to risk a stable career path, potentially to be [targeted] in the new role?’” he said.

Mr. Malkin expanded on that theme in a prepared statement, charging that overzealous members of the public have cost the Steamship Authority its ability to consider all the best candidates for general manager.

“The evolution of a group of concerned people from helpful observers to constant critics and agitators has had a negative impact,” said Mr. Malkin, who also complained about weekly Freedom of Information Act requests for correspondence on Steamship Authority affairs and about frequent attacks in local media.

“The solicited campaign of letters to Island newspapers and social media slander has made the general manager job undesirable for some very qualified people,” he said.

“I think this is just a terrible situation that we have lost candidates because of this constant stream of negativity,” Mr. Malkin concluded.

Mr. Munier and working group member Robert Jones, who represents Barnstable on the governing board, backed Mr. Malkin’s statement, while working group and port council member Nat Lowell of Nantucket acknowledged its accuracy.

“It’s true. It’s not made up,” Mr. Lowell said.

During the public comment section of Thursday’s working group meeting, Elizabeth O’Connor, a leader in the recently formed Steamship Authority Citizens’ Action Group, asked to be provided with specific examples of what Mr. Malkin called social media slander.

“I need specific examples, times, places, dates, with writing, to support your comment of publicly calling us out for slander,” she said, asking Mr. Kenneally to take her words as an official request.

“I need it writing, and I’d like it by the end of the week,” she said.

The Steamship Authority board of governors is scheduled to meet on Martha’s Vineyard the morning of Oct. 23, but Mr. Kenneally recommended that the general manager candidate interviews should take place on a different date, with one public interview in the morning and the other in the afternoon.

Mr. Davis, who rose from the accounting department to become treasurer/comptroller before he was promoted to general manager in late 2016, has agreed to step into an advisory position at a comparable salary once his successor is on the job.