Nearly a billion dollars earmarked for solar panels on affordable housing in California was siphoned into Democratic voter registration and political activism, according to a new report from CAL DOGE. The report argues that $928 million intended for the Solar on Multifamily Affordable Housing program, known as SOMAH, ended up enriching leftist organizations rather than lowering energy costs for the residents it was supposed to serve.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton did not mince words.
"$928 million has been stolen. Your money."
Hilton said he wants to know where the rest of the money went, and CAL DOGE is now calling for a full audit of SOMAH's outreach and education spending, including subcontractors and pass-through payments.
SOMAH was created by AB 693 in 2015, funded at up to $100 million every year using cap and trade auction proceeds. The stated purpose was simple: install solar panels on apartment buildings in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods across California and lower utility bills for tenants. The New York Post reported.
The results tell a different story. CAL DOGE says SOMAH completed only 269 projects, totaling $72 million. That means out of roughly a decade of funding at up to $100 million annually, the program's actual solar installation output was a fraction of what taxpayers bankrolled.
So where did the rest go?
According to the CAL DOGE report, the answer runs through a web of nonprofit organizations that appear to be "double-dipping on public funds to provide solar panels on apartment buildings" while actually "building a left-wing activist machine in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods across the state."
The report identifies GRID Alternatives, the California Environmental Justice Alliance (CEJA), and Tides Advocacy as key players in this ecosystem. CEJA Action, described as a 501(c)(4) political organization, mobilized voters of color in 2024, endorsing 24 progressive candidates for the California legislature.
CAL DOGE's conclusion is blunt: the fiscal sponsorship structure and overlapping ecosystem are how public funds meant to inform tenants about solar benefits are indirectly supporting partisan campaign activity.
Read that again. Money collected from Californians through cap and trade auctions, routed through a solar panel program, passed through nonprofit intermediaries, and landed in the hands of organizations running voter mobilization campaigns for Democratic candidates. Hilton framed it in terms most voters would understand:
"Do you know where it's gone? Voter registration. By leftist groups supporting the Democratic Party."
CAL DOGE Director Jenny Rae Le Roux said that when the program launched, Californians were promised it would lower their utility bills. Instead, she claimed that bills have more than doubled compared to 2015 for everyone except those enrolled in the program.
So the average California ratepayer funded a program through cap and trade costs that drove their own energy bills higher, while the program's primary output was not cheaper electricity for low-income tenants but a pipeline of cash flowing to progressive political operations. The solar panels were the justification. The activism was the product.
This is a pattern that conservatives have flagged for years in California's green energy apparatus. Programs sold as environmental justice or climate action become vehicles for political organizing, funded by taxpayers who never consented to bankrolling anyone's campaign infrastructure. The environmental label provides the moral cover. The nonprofit structure provides the legal cover. And the money keeps flowing.
Le Roux noted that the Trump administration pulled funding from GRID Alternatives in August 2025. But she also pointed out that California money continues to flow with no accountability regarding what happened to federal funds before the cutoff.
That distinction matters. Washington acted. Sacramento has not. The full audit CAL DOGE is demanding would be the first serious attempt to trace where this money actually landed and whether the outreach and education spending that justified it was ever anything more than a pass-through to partisan groups.
Calls to SOMAH were not returned.
California's political class has perfected a particular kind of grift: create a massive government program with an unassailable name, fund it lavishly, and then let allied nonprofits absorb the money while delivering a fraction of the promised results. Anyone who questions the spending gets accused of opposing clean energy or affordable housing.
But 269 completed projects out of a billion-dollar program is not a clean energy policy. It is not an affordable housing policy. It is a redistribution scheme dressed in solar panels.
"It is an absolute scandal. Just the latest in the amount of money that's been stolen from you."
Hilton is right to use that word. When a program takes public money designated for one purpose and routes it toward political organizing for one party, "stolen" is not hyperbole. It is the most precise term available.
California's taxpayers funded the machine. They just weren't told they were building it.
