Chicago Withheld the Drainage Maps. This Time, the PAC Said It Could.
Opinion 26-009 upheld withholding of detailed drainage-infrastructure locations. The statutory exemption—not a general appeal to secrecy—decided the case.
Not every binding opinion is a rebuke. In 26-009, the Illinois Attorney General upheld Chicago’s refusal to release records showing exact surface-water drainage infrastructure locations.
Daniel Beaudin requested sewer and flood-control atlases, mapping data, engineering schematics and equivalent records for a specific area. His May 15,2026, request expressly sought exact infrastructure locations. The Department of Water Management denied it on May 19 under FOIA’s utility-location exemption.
The requester challenged the security explanation
Beaudin argued that drains and catch basins are visible from public streets and questioned how confirming their locations could be a security threat. He also pointed to the city’s public GIS resources. Those are intelligible objections to an agency invoking secrecy over public infrastructure.
The PAC examined the actual statutory language and reviewed the withheld records. Section 7(1)(x) covers records regarding the location or security of specified utility facilities. The opinion read those as alternative grounds. It did not require the city to prove that disclosing a location would also create a security risk.
The department’s stormwater system qualified as utility gathering and transmission infrastructure. The reviewed records included detailed maps of sewers, storm mains, access points and related features. Their subject matter fell within the exemption.
The limit belongs in an accountability series
The ruling found no FOIA violation in this denial. It does not mean every document held by a water department is secret, or that every reference to infrastructure satisfies the same exemption. It resolves the records and language at issue here.
A serious public-access beat has to report this outcome alongside the violations. The public’s presumption of access is powerful, but it is not permission to ignore an exemption the legislature actually wrote.
The request, denial, challenge and review still matter. They exposed the boundary in a binding decision that other requesters can read before pursuing the same category of exact-location information.
Read the record
Open or download the official binding opinion 26-009 (PDF). The opinion contains the complaint history, the agency’s response, the legal analysis and the ordered remedy.
Reporting is based on the cited opinion and linked coverage. A direction to disclose records or repeat a vote is not proof that the agency later complied. Cover: AI-generated editorial illustration; rooms, papers and objects are symbolic. “PAC vs.” is a series label, not a court-case caption.
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