Despite billions of dollars in federal help throughout his career in the solar energy sector, U.S. Senate hopeful Jim Lamon insists government should “get the hell out of the way” of American businesses.
Lamon is the former CEO and founder of DEPCOM Power Inc., a Scottsdale-based utility-scale solar company. In 2019, the Paradise Valley Republican claimed on a Freedom Files podcast that neither he nor DEPCOM “ever asked for a subsidy or handout from anyone.”
“No handouts,” Lamon said in March. “We can’t have this constant Big Brother government to help. That’s not going to allow us to be the strong and the powerful nation that we can be to help our own.”
But in December 2020, Lamon accepted $2,660,600 in federal relief from the Paycheck Protection Program, designed by Congress to provide economic reprieve for payroll, rent, mortgage interest, and utilities, records show.
In October 2021, Lamon said DEPCOM “[did] not want to be on subsidies. As soon as we get off [the ground successfully], we want [subsidies] off.” Then, at the America Uncanceled Conservative Political Action Conference this March, Lamon again claimed he did not want to be on government subsidies, despite building his career with federal help. He went on to criticize the government’s power to “spend so much money” last year, noting that Congress had disbursed $4 trillion in coronavirus relief spending, even though his company got a slice of the pie.
In 2011, First Solar received more than $3 billion in loan guarantees from the Obama administration to build the Agua Caliente, Antelope Valley, and Desert Sunlight solar farms in Arizona and California. First Solar later announced it was cutting American jobs.
Lamon took a leading role in the three projects that were funded by the $3 billion in Department of Energy loan guarantees in 2012.
First Solar implicitly threatened to scrap plans for its Arizona manufacturing plant if it did not receive loan guarantees for the three projects.
Lamon’s team built the Antelope Valley Solar Ranch in Los Angeles County in 2012, and he was involved in controversial settlement talks that resulted in furloughed American workers. The solar panel connectors Lamon planned to install were not certified by the common U.S. standard for use with such a large system, which caused a halt in construction and furloughs of 230 construction workers.
The furloughs were “a severe blow” to a town in metro Los Angeles suffering from a high rate of unemployment.
After telling Congress the company was “financially strong,” First Solar laid off 2,000 employees, nearly one-third of its workforce, in 2012. The company didn’t disclose how many layoffs were stateside.
On the 2012 presidential campaign trail, Republican nominee Mitt Romney spotlighted the controversy in a campaign ad, noting that First Solar accepted billions from the federal government and then laid-off workers.
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