Smart grid FOIAs not a waste of money

In a recent Daily Herald article Naperville Councilman Grant Wehrli says, “At this point it’s just harassment and borderline abuse of the FOIA system.” Also, “Councilman Steve Chirico agreed but said he wasn’t surprised to see the total cost so far. He also said the opponents were ‘abusing’ and ‘gaming the system.’”

In my opinion, these public statements are an abuse of their offices, and seem to be a continual pattern of intimidation and public defamation of people who are critical of this initiative.

I believe this is an abuse of power by the city council, using their capacity as elected officials to make personal attacks on residents who are concerned with improprieties in the way that the NSGI has been handled.

The city council appears to be ignoring the fact that these FOIA requests have yielded evidence of: City staff engaging taxpayer resources for political purposes; false information that was relied upon to arrive at punitive pricing for the “wireless workaround”; city vendors inserting shills into public forum at city council meetings; blatant misstatements of fact surrounding costs associated with PR on this issue; blatant misstatements of this project being on-time and on budget despite projected overruns of $1.2 million; inappropriate travel by city staffer paid for by vendor; multiple instances of apparent violations of Illinois Open Meetings Act.

Instead of investigating the irregularities that have come from these FOIA requests, and have been brought to the council’s attention, Mr. Chirico and Mr. Wehrli have chosen to make derogatory comments about residents who are concerned about the financial, security, privacy and health concerns surrounding the deployment of 57,000 wireless smart meters on our homes and businesses.

Until the city of Naperville is forthcoming with information I will continue to exercise my right to be informed and will request public documents when I see irregularities.

Tom Glass

Naperville Smart Meter Awareness