Electricity: undergrounding of electrical wires.

(1) Under existing law, the Public Utilities Commission has jurisdiction over public utilities, including electrical corporations. Under its existing authority, the commission requires electrical corporations to implement the California Overhead Conversion Program, Rule 20A, to provide financial assistance in the form of credits to local governments to facilitate projects that are in the public interest and that remove overhead infrastructure, replacing it with infrastructure in underground trenches. Under existing law, a violation of the Public Utilities Act or any order, decision, rule, direction, demand, or requirement of the commission is a crime. This bill would require the commission to require electrical corporations, by July 1, 2020, to develop and administer programs to provide matching funds to local jurisdictions for conversion projects to replace overhead electrical infrastructure with underground electrical infrastructure in Tier 3 High Fire Threat Districts. The bill would require the commission to direct electrical corporations to reallocate credits provided to a jurisdiction under the Rule 20A program for purposes of those conversion projects, as specified. The bill would authorize the commission to require electrical corporations to replace overhead electrical infrastructure in a Tier 3 High Fire Threat District that is destroyed as a result of a fire caused by overhead electrical infrastructure with underground electrical infrastructure if the commission makes specified determinations. Because certain of the above provisions would be in the act, and a violation of an action by the commission implementing the above provisions would be a crime, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program. (2) Existing law, 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 the use of market-based compliance mechanisms in regulating those emissions. Existing law requires all moneys, except for fines and penalties, collected by the state board as part of a market-based compliance mechanism to be deposited in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and to be available for appropriation. This bill would, beginning with the 2019–20 fiscal year and ending with the 2023–24 fiscal year, appropriate an unspecified amount annually from the fund to the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to provide grants to local jurisdictions undertaking conversion projects in Tier 3 High Fire Threat Districts to move electrical infrastructure underground, as described above, thereby making an appropriation. (3) 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 no reimbursement is required by this act for a specified reason. (4) This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.