Enterprise zones: energy management plans.

The Enterprise Zone Act provides for the designation of zones according to specified criteria, pursuant to which certain entities within each zone may receive regulatory, tax, and other incentives for economic and employment development and private investment. This bill would amend the Enterprise Zone Act to authorize a city, county, or city and county to develop energy management plans with an electrical corporation, gas corporation, local publicly owned electric utility, or rural electric cooperative, serving an enterprise zone other than an enterprise zone within a harbor or port district formed pursuant to specified law, in order to reduce air emissions, to promote economic development, to increase new business, and to retain existing businesses in that enterprise zone. The bill would require the Public Utilities Commission to provide expedited review of the proposed energy management plan elements that involve programs to incentivize economic development in the enterprise zone and administered by the electrical or gas corporation to facilitate economic development. The bill would require the commission to encourage electrical or gas corporations to participate jointly with local agencies in developing, implementing, and administering energy management plans for enterprise zones, and would prohibit the commission from limiting the role of the electrical or gas corporation that was cooperatively developed in the energy management plan. Under the Bergeson-Peace Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank Act, the California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank is established within state government for the purpose of funding specified types of infrastructure development projects. The bill would make a project that promotes economic development in enterprise zones developed pursuant to an energy management plan eligible for funding through the bank. The Jobs and Economic Improvement Through Environmental Leadership Act of 2011 establishes specified judicial review procedures for the judicial review of an environmental impact report under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and approvals granted for a leadership project related to the development of a residential, retail, commercial, sports, cultural, entertainment, or recreational use project, or clean renewable energy or clean energy manufacturing project. The act authorizes the Governor to certify a leadership project for streamlining pursuant to the act if certain conditions are met. Those provisions are repealed as of January 1, 2015. The bill would include a project pursued in implementation of an energy management plan in the definition of leadership project eligible for streamlining under the Jobs and Economic Improvement Through Environmental Leadership Act of 2011. The bill would delete the January 1, 2015, repeal, of the act and, instead, make those streamlining provisions inoperative on that date except to a project pursued in implementation of an energy management plan pursuant to the bill, for which project those provisions would be operative indefinitely. Because the lead agency under CEQA would be required to use these alternative procedures for creating the administrative record if the applicant for a project pursued in implementation of an energy management plan so chooses and the project is certified by the Governor, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program. The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that, if the Commission on State Mandates determines that the bill contains costs mandated by the state, reimbursement for those costs shall be made pursuant to these statutory provisions.