Vehicle registration: Environmental rebates.

Existing law establishes the Road Maintenance and Rehabilitation Program, to address deferred maintenance on the state highway system and the local street and road system, and funds that program, in part, with an annual transportation improvement fee imposed on vehicles with a varying fee between $25 and $175 based on vehicle value. The California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 designates the State Air Resources Board as the state agency charged with monitoring and regulating sources of emissions of greenhouse gases. The act authorizes the state board to include use of market-based compliance mechanisms. The act authorizes the state board to adopt a regulation that establishes a system of market-based declining annual aggregate emissions limits for sources or categories of sources that emit greenhouse gases. Existing law requires all moneys, except for fines and penalties, collected by the state board from a market-based compliance mechanism to be deposited in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and to be available upon appropriation by the Legislature. Upon registering a vehicle, existing law requires the Department of Motor Vehicles to issue a certificate of ownership and a registration card to the legal owner. Existing law requires a registration card to contain certain information upon its face, including the name and residence or business address of the owner and of the legal owner of the vehicle. This bill would establish the Climate Policy Rebate program and the Climate Policy Rebate Special Fund. The program would provide rebates to offset the transportation improvement fee imposed on a vehicle. The bill would require quarterly transfers of funds from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund to the Climate Policy Rebate Special Fund in amounts needed to fund the rebates, as determined by the department. The bill would require the amount of an individual rebate to equal the transportation improvement fee imposed on a vehicle, and those rebates would be paid from the Climate Policy Rebate Special Fund to the department upon appropriation by the Legislature. The bill would require the registration documents issued for a vehicle to display the amount of the Climate Policy Rebate that was applied by the department toward the vehicle registration costs for the vehicle.