To me, anyway.

Last week was Sunshine Week, a time for those who care about open, accountable government to build public awareness about the importance of this issue.

As readers know, last week I wrote to the Tom Petersen, the community relations coordinator for D211 and asked for information about what D211 is paying these days for electricity.

Mr. Petersen responded this way on Friday afternoon:

As you may know, District 211 is a defendant in a lawsuit in regard to its membership in the IEC. While we are usually prompt in our response to inquiries, we are presently advised by Counsel to do all that we can to refrain from responses regarding certain aspects of the lawsuit until both parties, the Defendant District 211 and Plaintiff, have filed their legal briefs. That briefing schedule will be completed within the next few weeks. Shortly thereafter, we will do our best to provide a cost analysis per your inquiry by posting it to our web site.

I wrote back, asking for a re-consideration of this decision.

Some points I made in asking that D211 re-consider its decision not to provide the public with information about what it is paying for electricity included:

I don’t see how sharing information about what D211 has paid in a recent month per KWH would have any impact on that lawsuit one way or the other.

You could be paying the lowest KWH rate in the state, or the highest, or somewhere in between, regardless of how the contract for electricity was entered into.

D211 has put out information claiming that it is saving money because of being in this contract with the IEC.

It doesn’t seem fair to me that D211 would put that information out there, but then withhold the basic facts that a district resident could use to determine whether D211 really has saved money.