Last year, Southern California’s air regulators rejected landmark rules that would have encouraged the switch from polluting gas heaters to electric heat pumps in the smoggiest region in the country. Now, environmental and public health advocates are pressing state and local officials to investigate whether opposition in the run-up to the decision was largely faked.
Members of the regulatory board voted 7–5 against the proposed rules in June, after receiving more than 20,000 public comments opposing them. It was “an unusually high number,” said Rainbow Yeung, spokesperson for the South Coast Air Quality Management District, which regulates the air quality for more than 17 million residents across Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties.
A Los Angeles Times investigation revealed that an advocacy software firm called CiviClick had been hired by a public affairs consultant with industry ties to deliver the large volume of emails — and raised questions about their legitimacy. The deluge “almost certainly” influenced the board’s decision, the L.A. Times reported, adding that most agenda items seen by the agency receive comments numbering in the single digits.
“It is … both shocking and concerning to learn that an agency responsible for regulating the air quality for nearly half of California’s population could have had the integrity of their public process compromised by comments made without people’s consent,” Gracyna Mohabir, clean air and energy regulatory advocate at the nonprofit California Environmental Voters, said during a February press conference with reporters.
Advocates are asking California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman to investigate whether CiviClick and others committed fraud to prevent the clean air rules from passing. As of Friday, no formal investigation had yet been launched. In the meantime, the SCAQMD itself has attempted to verify opposition letters, but those efforts have been inconclusive so far.
The agency’s rules would have ramped down the sale of new gas heaters but not banned them. The proposals would have encouraged manufacturers to gradually increase sales of superefficient electric heat pumps and heat-pump water heaters until they represented 30% of heater sales by 2027 and 90% by 2036. These manufacturers would have also paid a partial mitigation fee of $50 to $500 per gas appliance sold — and likely passed that fee on to customers who still opted for gas.
Last June after their decision, regulators kicked the proposals back to a subgroup committee for further discussion. They have not announced a timeline to revisit the rules.
High-powered opposition
In the months leading up to the air district’s vote, the utility Southern California Gas Co., or SoCalGas, and allied groups spread misleading information about the rules, and encouraged mayors and other public officials to send letters, testify, and pass local resolutions railing against the measures.
Now, it’s clear that a key figure rallying opposition was Matt Klink, a public affairs consultant who ran a targeted campaign that resulted in the avalanche of comments now under scrutiny. Klink is a partner at California Strategies, one of the state’s most powerful lobbying firms, whose clients include Sempra, the parent company of SoCalGas.
Klink contracted with CiviClick, which has billed itself as “the first and best AI-powered grassroots advocacy platform,” to generate opposition comments. The platform “made the ultimate difference,” Klink said in a sponsored August article in Campaigns & Elections magazine. He did not respond to Canary Media’s multiple requests for comment.
CiviClick “knew the local targets who would respond to the messaging that was constructed … [And the firm] said, ‘these are the results that we guarantee,’” Klink said in the article. “We did two separate rounds of outreach, and they met the targets in both rounds early. AQMD staff are not used to getting tens of thousands of emails so it made a massive difference in turning the tide.”
In North Carolina, CiviClick is separately facing scrutiny for its involvement in producing mass emails supporting a proposed gas pipeline. Two local county commissioners replied to what they thought were emails from their constituents, only to learn that those individuals hadn’t sent the messages and didn’t know what the commissioners were talking about, E&E News reported in 2025.
