SOLAR RIGHTS — PLEASE MAKE A CALL

Sorry to write you on a long holiday weekend, but the utilities do their dirtiest work during times like these. I hope you can take 5 minutes to call your state Assemblymember and tell them to oppose AB 1139. Please consider this even if you already made a phone call. Your Assemblymember needs to hear a flood of voicemail messages when they get back to work on Tuesday.

Here’s the deal. Thanks to your efforts, state lawmakers have been absolutely flooded with emails and phone calls from constituents like you — all in opposition to AB 1139. We estimate over 20,000 people have taken action. Multiple lawmakers’ offices reported getting 200 or more phone calls this week. Meanwhile, over 100 organizations have joined us in opposition to the Utility Profit Grab and are mobilizing their own members, as have celebrities like Property Brother Jonathan Scott and NBA Hall of Famer Bill Walton.

Yesterday, as state lawmakers began buckling under your grassroots pressure, the utilities and their cronies quietly changed AB 1139 to cover up their intentions, while still ensuring that most solar users will be charged new monthly solar fees of $70 on average and the credit for sending extra solar energy to the grid gets slashed by 80%. The provisions of the bill that would explicitly kill rooftop solar were replaced with insider policy jargon. The language is coded to seem innocuous to all but a handful of CPUC lawyers, but would absolutely have the same harmful effect on rooftop solar.

We’re not fooled, but your representatives in Sacramento may be. That’s why I need you to make a call this weekend. They need to hear loud and clear that the public is watching their every step and expects them to vote no on AB 1139 when it comes up for a vote this week.

Call them with one click

Here is a fact sheet about AB 1139, a Toolkit with additional ideas for helping to defeat the bill and our newest campaign video. Reply to this email if you have any questions and have a lovely long weekend!

— Dave Rosenfeld, Executive Director