York County delays Wi-Fi project after closed-door meeting with conspiracy theorists

For more than 15 minutes in a closed-door meeting last December, the most powerful players in York County government listened respectfully as conspiracy theorists made their case against a planned Wi-Fi expansion.

All of the county’s commissioners — President Julie Wheeler, then Vice President Commissioner Doug Hoke, then-Commissioner Ron Smith and Commissioner-elect Scott Burford — and Chief Clerk Greg Monskie tuned in via a video conference as activists shared long-debunked theories about 5G Wi-Fi causing adverse health effects.

“I appreciate the information,” Hoke, apparently trying to strike a conciliatory tone, said as the presentation ended. “As I said before, this isn’t my area of expertise but it’s interesting to learn about this.”

None of the county officials questioned the veracity of the activists’ claims during their presentation, a recording obtained by The York Dispatch via a Right-to-Know Law request shows, although two experts in attendance later engaged in, at-times, testy exchanges with the conspiracy theorists.

>> Please consider subscribing to support local journalism.

York County delayed its planned expansion of broadband internet access amid mounting pressure from Wi-Fi opponents just before granting the private meeting. The Board of Commissioners eventually moved forward with those plans in a January vote.

When the county’s experts — Silas Chamberlain, vice president of economic and community development for the York County Economic Alliance, and John Dolmetsch, a contractor for the county in its broadband initiative — offered counterarguments during the Dec. 5 meeting, the Wi-Fi opponents dismissed them.

At one point, Jolie Diane, who led the activists’ presentation, claimed that China could induce brain damage and that installing the Wi-Fi emitters would be installing a Chinese system of biometric surveillance.

China does closely surveil its own population using Wi-Fi — something that has been well-documented by U.S. and international security agencies — but there’s no evidence to support Diane’s claims. As for the health claims, researchers have found no clear associations between electromagnetic radiation of the type emitted by Wi-Fi and adverse health effects.

Diane, when presented with evidence by the county’s expert, said she didn’t trust some of the existing science on the issues.

“We don’t have to stand for having these outdated guidelines, we can put in something now to protect us,” she said. “Otherwise, we’re going to get more violence, we’re going to get more mental health issues. That’s what is associated with the brain.”

That’s despite repeated scientific studies and evidence that Wi-Fi does not have those effects.

“[C]urrently no scientific evidence establishes a causal link between wireless device use and cancer or other illnesses,” the Federal Communications Commission has said. “Those evaluating the potential risks of using wireless devices agree that more and longer-term studies should explore whether there is a better basis for RF safety standards than is currently used.”

Wheeler, Burford, Smith and Dolmetsch did not respond to requests for comment.

“I am always willing to listen to constituents’ concerns,” Hoke said, via text message, when asked about his involvement in the Dec. 5 meeting. “Lots of different thoughts to consider.”

Reached via email, Chamberlain cited the words of the county’s health strategist Dr. Matt Howie, who spoke at a Dec. 20 Board of Commissioners meeting.

>> Please consider subscribing to support local journalism.

“We have received guidance from the County’s chief public health advisor that there are no legitimate health concerns related to these types of wireless networks, and this is consistent with current state and federal guidance,” Chamberlain said. “In fact, we agree with public health advocates who believe closing the digital divide and providing access to the internet improves health outcomes for residents.”

Sunshine Act violation: Melissa Melewsky, the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association’s media law counsel, said York County’s refusal to publicize the meeting is a problem.

“The fact that the call took place creates potential Sunshine Act liability, not the fact that the call wasn’t released,” Melewsky said. “This was, apparently, a quorum discussion of agency business that took place outside a public meeting. The call is the Sunshine Act issue; releasing the call at a later date would not fix the Sunshine Act problem.”

Monskie, answering questions after a December commissioners meeting, pushed back against the idea that the meeting was a public one and therefore should’ve been advertised to the public.

“You can have work sessions, you can have information sessions, that’s not the way it works,” Monskie said. “Just because they were all in the room together doesn’t make it a public meeting.”

Melewsky disagreed.

“There is no ‘work sessions’ exception to the Sunshine Act,” she said. “If a quorum of the supervisors were discussing agency business, they had to do so at a properly advertised public meeting, unless a valid executive session exception applied.”

The Dec. 5 video conference followed taking one of the activists’ claims seriously enough that the Board of Commissioners delayed a motion dedicated to its project to place Wi-Fi emitters in York City and Hanover for months.

And it’s not the first time the county has bowed to outside actors following a secretive meeting. In 2022, the county held a hand-count of certain precincts in its election following a meeting with Audit the Vote, a group that spread misinformation about the 2022 election.

Chamberlain, in his comments during the meeting, said the county’s census and canvassing efforts had shown a lack of access to Wi-Fi due to various barriers, including economic reasons.

“The idea of the Wi-Fi network was simply to provide base-level service in the area where people face many barriers,” Chamberlain said. “When we did our outreach to stakeholders in the city of York and Hanover and surrounding areas … they were asking for this. This wasn’t something that we came up with in a vacuum.”

At the Dec. 20 meeting, Howie said he had reviewed what the activists had sent to the county.

“When it comes to areas of concern of health, there’s a lot of information and that can be very dizzying when you go through that level of information and detail,” Howie said at that meeting. “With all respect to the people who’ve clearly done their due diligence, you look for some sources of clarity when it comes to standards that are the best standards we have to date.”

In 2023, the county announced plans to expand broadband access through the use of Wi-Fi emitters. York-based Business Information Group has had several work items previously approved by the county. While the county had been set to approve a $48,032 contract with York-based IB Abel Inc. on Nov. 15, 2023, the motion was suddenly pulled after Darla Byerly of Warrington Township urged the commissioners to pull the item in public comment.

Byerly was one of the attendees of the Dec. 5 meeting. Laura Basso and Sara Thompson are also frequent commenters. Byerly would later refuse to comment when asked at last week’s commissioner’s meeting, taking issue with being referred to as a “conspiracy theorist.”

“We’ve taken readings, and we’d love to see someone else bring hard data,” Diane said, during a recent commissioners’ meeting.

On Dec. 5, the group brought their own readings of radiofrequency and microwave radiation from existing 5G Wi-Fi emitters, claiming that the radiation presented a danger to the public.

“We’re adding more and more radiation no one’s measuring, we’re absorbing that radiation,” Diane said during the Dec. 5 meeting, comparing it to the Romans using lead pipes to transport water.

The Wi-Fi opponents also argued that the city should instead try to expand fiber optic cables, expanding internet connections via buried lines as opposed to over-the-air Wi-Fi.

Dolmetsch said fiber is superior to Wi-Fi, but argued the costs were prohibitive. He estimated that it would cost $1,500 per home to run fiber, increasing the project costs to $60 million.

Near the end of the discussion, Basso took issue with Dolmetsch’s very presence on the call, saying that he was a part of the industry her colleagues are trying to warn the county about.

“Your expert is industry-funded, so that is a conflict of interest,” Basso said. “So, I would rather see non-biased experts.”

In response, near the end of the hourlong meeting, Wheeler noted that she pulled data from the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation. The information, she said, indicated that there was no evidence of increased risk of cancer, infertility or other adverse health effects.

The speakers frequently cited a 2021 court case between the Federal Communications Commission and the Environmental Health Trust, a nonprofit that argues mobile devices, Wi-Fi, 5G and other radio frequency systems pose a health risk.

That ruling, decided in the U.S. District Court of Appeals, sent the issue of determining potential adverse effects from radiation exposure back to the FCC for further study.

“To be clear, we take no position in the scientific debate regarding the health and environmental effects of RF radiation—we merely conclude that the Commission’s cursory analysis of material record evidence was insufficient as a matter of law,” the decision reads.

After a particularly heated exchange, Wheeler asked Diane not to yell at the county’s expert.

“It is life and death, and we’ve been trying to reach you,” Diane said.

Ultimately, the meeting only delayed the county’s digital broadband initiative, not stop it. The county has passed several motions regarding Wi-Fi, including the initial motion that had been delayed.

You can watch the video in its entirety below:

>> Please consider subscribing to support local journalism.

— Reach Matt Enright via email at menright@yorkdispatch.com or via Twitter at @Matthew_Enright.