$900M taken from CA solar panel program and pumped into Dem. voting activism

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CAL DOGE has claimed nearly $1 billion was taken from a California solar panel program and funneled into Democratic voter registration and activism.

The report, out Thursday, argues $928 million from gas tax and electric bills intended for solar panels for apartment buildings went to the leftist groups.

SOMAH, which stands for Solar on Multifamily Affordable Housing, was created by AB 693 in 2015. Since then it has been funded for up to $100 million every year using “cap and trade auctions proceeds.”

CAL DOGE said $1 billion has been given to the program since its creation
Obtained by the CA POST.

CAL DOGE said that according to SOMAH’s latest report they have completed only 269 projects for a total of $72 million.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, who has maintained his lead in the race in the latest poll, said he wants to know where the rest of the money went.

“It is an absolute scandal. Just the latest in the amount of money that’s been stolen from you.”

The report lists what CAL DOGE called the partner organizations of SOMAH, who were “double dipping on public funds to provide solar panels on apartment buildings.”

It continues: “But actually are building a left-wing activist machine in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods across the state.”

CAL DOGE Director Jenny Rae Le Roux said that when the program began Californians were promised it would lower their utility bills. But what has happened is the opposite.

Meanwhile everyone except who was in the program has seen their utility bills more than double what they were paying in 2015, she claimed.

Under SOMAH’s structure, GRID Alternatives is a non-profit that serves as a key program administrator on the team, while the California Environmental Justice Alliance (CEJA) is promoted as a long-standing partner and community-based coordinating entity for outreach that gets paid by GRID’s team as a subcontractor, CAL DOGE claimed.

CEJA’s related entity, CEJA Action, is a 501(c)(4) political organization that explicitly seeks to build political power and operates as a project of Tides Advocacy, according to CAL DOGE.

CAL DOGE said the political organization published voter guides, and mobilized voters of color in 2024, along with endorsing 24 progressive candidates for the CA legislature.

It claimed the “fiscal sponsorship structure and overlapping ecosystem is how public funds meant to inform tenants about solar benefits are indirectly supporting partisan campaign activity.”

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