Alarm Company Act: local use permit.

Existing law, the Alarm Company Act, establishes the Bureau of Security and Investigative Services, within the Department of Consumer Affairs and sets forth its powers and duties over the licensure, registration, and regulation of alarm company operators and alarm agents. That act does not prevent local authorities of any city, county, or city and county from doing certain things, including enacting ordinances governing false alarm activations and responses or requiring a person who owns, leases, rents, or otherwise possesses an alarm system to obtain a permit to operate the alarm system. This bill would, notwithstanding those provisions, prohibit a city, county, or city and county that requires a person who owns, leases, rents, or otherwise possesses an alarm system to obtain a local use permit to operate the alarm system from fining an alarm company for requesting dispatch to a customer, whether residential or commercial, that does not have a current local use permit if it was not the alarm company's legal responsibility to obtain the local use permit for the customer or renew the local use permit for the customer or, if it is the alarm company's legal responsibility to renew the local use permit for the customer, the alarm company was not notified that the customer's local use permit had expired.