AMI Smart Meter Politics: Can Pennsylvania Pass Into Law An Opt-Out Bill Just Introduced?
The good people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have been deprived of their U.S. and State Constitutional rights regarding the forced imposition along with aggravated harassment by utility companies of those who stood their rights for refusing an AMI Smart Meter because the law enacted (Act 129 of 2008) was written as an Opt-In bill/law.
However, many people are chomping at the bit about what’s going on in Pennsylvania and there’s been a new set of bills affecting AMI Smart Meters introduced in to the House Consumer Affairs Committee. Below is an overview of what’s happened in the past so previous bills wouldn’t be enacted, plus information why there has to be an investigation into the chairman of that committee.
Ever since the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PA PUC) erroneously believed, as confirmed in PA PUC Office of Communication’s Dave Hixson’s March 22, 2017 letter to Thomas A. McCarey, and wrote implementation regulations for AMI Smart Meters per HB2200/Act 129 (2008), which actually was written as an OPT-IN Bill for electric, natural gas and water utilities, passed and signed as OPT-IN legislation [see HB2200 §2807(f)7(2) (i), (ii), (iii)], Pennsylvanians have suffered much harassment, indignation, and even poor health for themselves and their families (electromagnetic hypersensitivity—EHS) as a result with no apparent relief in sight.
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Here is an example from of utility PECO’s “hard ball tactics” for a customer who wants to get off the grid: “Peco bill to hook Chesco man’s solar array into grid: $45K.” PECO is demanding $45,000 plus hoops to be jumped through! How much did PECO charge pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson to construct and place online its solar panel farm just off the west side of Route 309 Expressway between Flourtown and Ft. Washington, PA? That SOLAR PANEL FARM must have a hundred or more solar panels, so how can PECO’s system handle that, if it can’t handle the solar array Kevin Dunleavy of Chester County wants to install?
The PA PUC’s apparent over-reach and its rabid enforcement via utility companies’ tactics apparently were recognized as needing correcting, so the PA state legislature (House members) introduced numerous opt-out bills over the last six years, since the PA PUC claimed there was no opt-out provision in Act 129! No opt-out was needed; it was an opt-in bill the PA PUC rewrote during their regulations and implementation writing exercises. Other states provide OPT-OUTs from AMI Smart Meters! Why not Pennsylvania?
What does that say if the PA state legislature tried to correct the untenable situation and provide opt-outs for suffering Pennsylvanians? The problem of not having smart meter opt-out legislation in PA is found with the apparent vested-interests of the House Consumer Affairs Committee Chairman, Robert Godshall, where all the opt-out bills were sent for review and voting out of committee.
Chairman Godshall, whose son Grey works as a Project Manager for Exelon/PECO—the utility harassing SE Pennsylvania utility customers, refused to call all those opt-out bills for a vote over six years and allowed them to die (sine die) in committee. Chairman Godshall should be sanctioned by the PA legislature for depriving Pennsylvanians of their constitutional rights to redress government as guaranteed by the U.S. and PA Constitutions!
Furthermore, Chairman Godshall should be made to step down from that committee for what probably is questionable vested-interest activity and, at the very least, have been made to recuse himself from working on those opt-out bills, since he repeatedly has told everyone who has ever asked him to release opt-out bills that he will NEVER release those bills.
That action, alone, ought to prove some sort of vested-interest or intent to deprive Pennsylvanians of their rights, which the PA Attorney General and other law enforcement officers at state and federal levels ought to investigate, since AMI Smart Meters are not mandatory in federal law. See Public Law 109-58 (Aug. 8, 2005) the Energy Policy Act of 2005 §1252 Smart Metering.
Below is Grey Godshall’s LinkedIn information, which somehow disappeared from that site after Pennsylvanians began questioning Chairman Godshall’s conflicts of interest[1], which someone has to investigate as to why Chairman Godshall is so adamant about not calling opt-out bills for a vote, when in the bill’s intent discussions published of record regarding HB2200 he said on February 11, 2008 as published in PA House Journal PN 3218, page 390:
In this case are we not taking the choice away from the consumer by saying you have to put this in service in your district rather than you may or you have a choice? Are we not saying that you must do it? We are taking that choice away from the consumer, I believe, and I would have no problem with this if we do it on a choice basis, as you used the word “choice” before. We are taking that choice away.
What, or who, intervened that Consumer Affairs Committee Chairman Godshall is the very person responsible for taking away that choice from Pennsylvanians by deliberately and actively preventing AMI Smart Meter OPT-OUT bills from being called to the floor for a vote for six consecutive years?
Shouldn’t the Pennsylvania Governor, Attorney General, Consumers’ Advocate Office and the PA PUC itself be held accountable for going along with some sort of collusion regarding depriving Pennsylvanians of CHOICE, a true American value and right, which has been dogmatically usurped and deprived?
Why is there no investigation of Chairman Godshall into this matter? Who’s to blame, and why? Has any money crossed someone’s hands to make Godshall change his mind? Shouldn’t that be investigated: who and prosecuted? Why aren’t the Pennsylvania press and media on this one like flies crawling over dead carrion?
June 16, 2017, 29 members of the PA House of Representatives in Harrisburg introduced another AMI Smart Meter bill, House Bill No. 1564, which PASMA suggests every Pennsylvanian encourages his/her respective representative to vote YES to pass into legislation.
HB1564 and the names of its 29 co-sponsors can be read here. Please contact those legislators to thank them and ask for their determination to get it passed into law so Pennsylvanians finally can get the relief desperately needed by persons with heart pacemakers, cancer, autistic children, EHS and other health reasons, or just because they don’t want that meter on their house—a matter of choice!
However, here’s another important reason for not wanting an AMI Smart Meter:
All Pennsylvanians should contact their respective members of the PA House in Harrisburg via this website or in writing via US mail to ask them to become co-sponsors of HB1564 and work to get it passed into law.
Two other supposed ‘opt-out’ bills were introduced the same day: HB1565 with only 26 co-sponsors (six who co-sponsored HB1564 did not co-sponsor it) and HB1566 with only 22 co-sponsors (11 of the co-sponsors of HB1546 did not co-sponsor it). What does that tell you about those two bills?
PASMA cannot recommend support for HB1565 and HB1566, as we think those two bills are “consolation prizes” granted to utility companies for agreeing to opt-outs from AMI Smart Meters!
Please support and work very hard and vocally to get HB1564 OPT-OUT from AMI Smart Meters enacted into law as soon as possible—60 days after the bill becomes law! This may be your last chance at getting an opt-out.
Notes:
[1] http://www.activistpost.com/2015/04/conflict-of-interest-smart-meter.html
Catherine J Frompovich (website) is a retired natural nutritionist who earned advanced degrees in Nutrition and Holistic Health Sciences, Certification in Orthomolecular Theory and Practice plus Paralegal Studies. Her work has been published in national and airline magazines since the early 1980s. Catherine authored numerous books on health issues along with co-authoring papers and monographs with physicians, nurses, and holistic healthcare professionals. She has been a consumer healthcare researcher 35 years and counting.
Catherine’s latest book, published October 4, 2013, is Vaccination Voodoo, What YOU Don’t Know About Vaccines, available on Amazon.com.
Her 2012 book A Cancer Answer, Holistic BREAST Cancer Management, A Guide to Effective & Non-Toxic Treatments, is available on Amazon.com and as a Kindle eBook.
Two of Catherine’s more recent books on Amazon.com are Our Chemical Lives And The Hijacking Of Our DNA, A Probe Into What’s Probably Making Us Sick (2009) and Lord, How Can I Make It Through Grieving My Loss, An Inspirational Guide Through the Grieving Process (2008)
