Electrical and gas corporations: rates.

Under existing law, the Public Utilities Commission has regulatory authority over public utilities, including electrical corporations and gas corporations. Existing law authorizes the commission to establish rules for all public utilities, subject to control by the Legislature. Existing law authorizes the commission to fix the rates and charges for every public utility and requires that those rates and charges be just and reasonable. Existing law prohibits a gas corporation from recovering any fine or penalty in any rate approved by the commission. This bill would additionally prohibit an electrical corporation from recovering a fine or penalty through a rate approved by the commission and would make related nonsubstantive changes. The Public Utilities Act authorizes the commission to ascertain and fix just and reasonable standards, classifications, regulations, practices, measurements, or service to be furnished, imposed, observed, and followed by specified public utilities, including all electrical corporations and gas corporations. If the commission finds, after a hearing, that the rules, practices, equipment, appliances, facilities, or service of any public utility, or the methods of manufacture, distribution, transmission, storage, or supply employed by the public utility, are unjust, unreasonable, unsafe, improper, inadequate, or insufficient, the act requires that the commission determine and, by order or rule, fix the rules, practices, equipment, appliances, facilities, service, or methods to be observed, furnished, constructed, enforced, or employed. This bill would prohibit an electrical corporation or gas corporation from recovering through a rate approved by the commission costs or expenses arising from damages caused by the electrical corporation's electric plant or the gas corporation's gas plant if the commission determines that the electrical or gas corporation, or its agent, did not reasonably construct, maintain, manage, control, or operate the plant and this unreasonable act or omission by the electrical or gas corporation, or its agent, increased the risk of the plant causing those damages. The bill would authorize the commission, for an electrical or gas corporation's rate application to recover costs or expenses, to authorize the recovery of those costs or expenses, in full or in part, and would specify that only those costs or expenses that are just and reasonable, which may comprise only a portion of those costs or expenses, are recoverable. The bill would state the intent of the Legislature and make legislative findings and declarations regarding the commission's rate recovery functions.