The operator of an electric bike program aimed at reducing car trips and greenhouse gas emissions is the subject of at least three investigations, including a criminal probe being conducted by the California Department of Justice.
Pedal Ahead, which has been awarded millions of dollars from public agencies across San Diego County and the state, was removed as of the e-bike initiative launched two years ago by the San Diego Association of Governments.
The management change came after questions were raised about participation reports Pedal Ahead filed with the regional planning agency known as SANDAG after receiving a grant worth approximately $440,000.
“The pilot program is currently under review to ensure the consultant was meeting its contract requirements,” SANDAG said in a statement. “This review started on February 15, 2024.”
The nonprofit, which was listed as delinquent by the state Attorney General’s Office until last week, also is the subject of an ongoing California Air Resources Board probe, according to documents obtained by The San Diego Union-Tribune.
A spokesperson for the state air board declined to comment on the internal investigation but said in a statement that Pedal Ahead was awarded $10 million in 2022.
The nonprofit subsequently was set to be paid an additional $3 million, although most of those funds have yet to be turned over, the spokesperson said.
“Pedal Ahead is receiving payment as work is completed, which to date has been around $1 million that has been focused on program readiness,” Air Resources Board spokesperson Lys Mendez said by email.
The San Diego nonprofit was restored to its current status last week, days after the Union-Tribune asked state and SANDAG officials about the delinquency status.
Additional records obtained by the Union-Tribune show that criminal investigators from the Department of Justice are looking at Pedal Ahead’s business practices, specifically how it spent at least some of the millions in public funds it has been awarded in recent years.
Department officials did not respond to questions about the inquiry.
The Pedal Ahead chief executive is Edward Clancy, a 56-year-old Lakeside man who previously worked as a local political consultant and even ran former San Diego Mayor Bob Filner’s 2012 campaign. He also used to promote professional bike racing.
Clancy said the nonprofit is proceeding with contract work as planned. He also said he was unaware of any investigations.
“I have no knowledge of that whatsoever,” he said in an interview. “I find it quite surprising. It’s news to me.”
Clancy said SANDAG took over its contract earlier this year under of the agreement that allow the planning agency to resume control of the e-bike program at any time.
“We delivered up to a certain point — the product, the bikes, tracking mechanisms, etc.,” he said. “There was a point where they said ‘OK, we’re going to manage the contract from this point.’”
SANDAG declined to say why it took over the project before the end of the two-year pilot program.
Earlier this year, it notified participants that it had begun managing the program. A spokesperson said only that the Pedal Ahead agreement was “under review.”
The planning agency announced its pilot e-bike program in 2022, selecting Pedal Ahead to run what was described as a “loan to own” project designed to get people out of their cars and instead rely on e-bikes for their commutes.
More than 1,500 applications were received within days of the pilot’s launch, according to SANDAG.
To be eligible, participants had to be low-income and willing to ride the bikes at least 100 miles a month. Records show, however, that some participants who received a bike made more than the income threshold of $50,000 per year. Several others did not meet the required mileage.
On the Pedal Ahead website and on social media, participants from across the county have shared how important the pilot has been to their overall wellness as they ride to and from work or to exercise.
One of them is City Heights resident Ana Moreno.
“This e-bike helps keep me sane and healthy especially after spending 8+ hours in front of a screen every day,” she is quoted as saying on the site.
“Pedal Ahead has afforded me the opportunity to experience the benefits of an e-bike, which has been a godsend to my physical, emotional, and mental health.”
Clancy said he was hired to hand out 120 bikes over a two-year period scheduled to expire at the end of this coming December. He said the agency’s decision to take over the program early was made while an audit into his service is underway.
“The final reporting is due in August,” he told the Union-Tribune. “We are waiting to hear from SANDAG.”
In a letter dated Thursday that Clancy provided to the Union-Tribune, a planning agency lawyer told Pedal Ahead that the review had just closed and that the organization may “continue with a portion of the remaining scope of work.”
The nonprofit will collect $3,600 a month for “management and ongoing program ” until the agreement expires this year, the notice said.
State Air Resources Board officials selected Pedal Ahead to run its initial e-bike program statewide in 2022, based largely on the organization’s handling of the San Diego pilot program.
The board subsequently boosted state e-bike funding to $31 million, according to the agency’s website, but officials declined to say whether Pedal Ahead were in line to manage all of that spending.
Two years ago, the Air Resources Board said the statewide e-bike program would launch in 2023. It later changed the timeline to this year.
The website now says it will begin during the second quarter of 2024, which ends this month. Mendez, the board spokesperson, now says the program is expected to launch sometime this year.
The breadth and scope of the Department of Justice investigation is not clear.
Neither is the focus of the internal reviews at SANDAG and the Air Resources Board. But a host of public disclosures show the charity’s financial and reporting practices have been contradictory.
The probes also may involve a series of for-profit companies Clancy created in recent years.
Negative assets
Pedal Ahead was first organized as Rider Safety Visibility, the public-benefit charity Clancy set up early 2020 in a filing with the California Secretary of State’s Office. He received a final letter of determination confirming the tax-exempt status from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service later that year.
According to its initial tax filing, the mission of Rider Safety Visibility was to work with bicycle dealers and manufacturers, apparel companies and others to promote bicycle safety. It also planned to make up to 400 e-bikes available to low-income riders by July 2021. The document showed the company had a four-person board of directors, including Clancy.
Rider Safety Visibility quickly attracted significant contributions, reporting just over $605,000 in revenue for 2020 alone. Records show $600,000 of that income came directly from government contracts.
The nonprofit claimed expenses of some $422,000 in 2020, most of that spent on bicycles and accessories. It also reported an annual salary of $65,000, and ended the year with about $180,000 in assets.
But revenue sank to barely $260,000 the following year, against spending of more than $410,000, including $45,000 in salary to Clancy. Rider Safety Visibility’s total assets were reduced to just over $33,000 by the end of the year.
In 2022, the same year SANDAG and the California Air Resources Board announced major grants to Pedal Ahead, the entity reported total revenue of $329,000. It also reported spending more than $395,000, leaving the nonprofit with net assets of negative $32,000.
Clancy claimed no salary in 2022, the year state officials announced his nonprofit would run the $10 million e-bike program.
The charity has a history of amending public filings.
In February 2023, Clancy signed a state disclosure under the penalty of perjury that his entity collected $288,535 in 2022 and spent the same amount.
Later last year, he filed an annual tax return showing different amounts of revenue and spending. He also amended his earlier state Registry of Charitable Trusts record to match his tax filing.
Clancy provided the Union-Tribune a 2023 tax filing that reflected an even more tenuous financial position. It claimed revenue of $162,000 against spending of more than $200,000, leaving Rider Safety Visibility with net assets of negative $101,000.
Asked where the $1 million or more the state paid the nonprofit was, Clancy said that money was banked elsewhere.
“Funding is in a money market , per contract requirement to yield interest that goes back into the program,” he said by email. “To date there is an additional approximate $34,000 earned. There will be an additional filing this year, will share when that is done.”
According to generally accepted ing principles, all assets owned by a tax-filing entity are to be declared on state and federal tax filings.
Clancy reported a $33,500 salary last year and a three-member board.
Confidential informant
Clancy, who shares a name with a British former professional bicycle racer and three-time Olympic gold medalist, has an entrepreneurial streak.
He has set up numerous businesses, and has not always complied with the rules, public records show.
Rider Safety Visibility, for example, was first opened as a for-profit limited liability company in 2018, state records show.
By 2020, it was listed as delinquent by the Secretary of State’s Office. It was suspended by the same office the following year, and also by the state Franchise Tax Board in 2021.
Clancy opened another for-profit entity called Pedal Ahead LLC in 2022, the same year his nonprofit with a similar name was awarded the $10 million state contract. State records now list that company as inactive.
Two years ago, Clancy launched Pedal Ahead Utah LLC from a condominium in Park City, Utah, business filings show. That company remains active, according to that state’s Division of Corporations and Commercial Code.
Clancy also organized Pedal Ahead Plus — a for-profit entity he said operates separately from the nonprofit. That venture is not ed with the California Secretary of State’s Office.
“It hasn’t yielded anything, and it’s not very active,” Clancy said.
The Pedal Ahead founder created a bike-racing enterprise in 2015 called SD TOC LOC, an acronym for the San Diego Tour of California Local Organizing Committee, a proposed leg of the Amgen Tour of California bike race, business records show.
The entity was formally terminated two years later.
Clancy also opened and ran a consulting firm called TrueLatino, New York state business disclosures show.
“I’ve had the chance to use political campaign experience in diverse settings (New York City to Mammoth Lakes, CA) to develop conversations and engagements related to tactics and strategies for unique voter approaches,” Clancy wrote on his LinkedIn profile.
Clancy is also no stranger to politics.
After Filner won the San Diego mayor’s race in 2012, he recruited Clancy to City Hall in January 2013 to manage a bike program.
“One of my first hires was — I call him the bike czar, he calls himself the bike guy,” Filner said at the time. “Ed Clancy is working as part of the city’s bike program.”
But the appointment was short-lived.
Filner resigned amid a flood of sexual misconduct accusations less than a year into his term.
Clancy was later reported to have been a confidential informant in an unrelated federal investigation into illegal campaign financing in San Diego County.
The Union-Tribune reported in 2014 that he wore a wire for the FBI, recording conversations with three people who were later charged with coordinating $500,000 in donations from Mexican businessman Jose Susumo Azano Matsura to Filner, then-District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis and two Democratic political committees.
Clancy, who received qualified immunity from federal prosecutors and was never himself charged with any wrongdoing, maintained his political connections after he stopped consulting.
In addition to SANDAG and the Air Resources Board, Pedal Ahead received hundreds of thousands of dollars from San Diego County, the San Diego Foundation and other funders, public records show.
