LETTER: City punishes free speech in face of fury over data center

To Ozaukee Press:

As a long-time landowner and farmer in Fredonia, I have grave concerns over what is happening in our area. On Dec. 2, at the Port Washington Common Council meeting, a citizen spoke out in a firm but measured voice against the $15 billion hyperscale data center to be built in Port Washington for the use of Oracle and Open AI, based thousands of miles away in Texas and California. After endorsing the recall of officials over this issue, she was arrested, handcuffed and forcibly removed by local police, along with two other citizens. 

  Why is the Port Washington government silencing their citizens, punishing free speech and making decisions behind closed doors? Should the voice of citizens be suppressed with aggressive, disproportionate police intervention just because they threaten to remove government leaders?

  Port Washington government has lost its way, forgetting basic tenets of representational government. By all accounts, their process approving the data center, and authorizing the massive tax benefits associated with the TID that will benefit the developer and end-users, is deeply flawed. 

  Consider that a citizen recently brought a lawsuit against Port Washington, alleging violations of the Open Records Law, following repeated attempts to obtain documentation about the data center approval, all of which were ignored. The opaque government process surrounding the data center development must end.

  Even more alarming is that actions taken unilaterally by Port Washington will broadly harm larger numbers of citizens in neighboring communities, where massive new power grid infrastructure —extra high-voltage transmission lines to transmit power to the data center—will require the taking of private property through easements and eminent domain, resulting in decimation of natural and other resources valued greatly by those communities. Growing numbers of citizens have united to oppose this power grid infrastructure and additional lawsuits against the parties involved are likely. 

  Citizen coalitions, local land trusts and private citizens seek to intervene in the regulatory proceedings to consider the transmission line routing. Four local governments—Fredonia, Saukville, Trenton and Farmington—have adopted resolutions strongly opposing the routing of these transmission lines through their communities. 

  What is happening in Port Washington is an abomination of the role of government in serving its people—an affront not only to freedom of speech, but also to basic principles of representational democracy, reflecting arrogance, conceit and condescension of governmental leaders. 

 Joseph P. Gromacki

Fredonia