Communication: telegraph corporations, telegraphy, and telegrams.

Existing law imposes specified duties upon a carrier of messages by telegraph. This bill would delete those provisions. The bill would also amend various other provisions to remove references to use of, maintenance of facilities used for, imposition of fees associated with, or accounting of expenses related to, telegram or telegraph, and telegram or telegraph companies. Existing law authorizes cancellation of various types of contracts and transactions using prescribed methods, including telegram or telegraph. This bill would delete references to the telegram or telegraph as a method for canceling those contracts or transactions. Exiting law authorizes any summons, writ, or order in any civil suit or proceeding, and all other papers requiring service, to be transmitted by telegraph for service, as specified. This bill would delete those provisions. Existing law requires an arbitration agreement to be in writing that is contained in a document signed by the parties or in an exchange of telecommunication, including a telegram. This bill would remove the reference to telegram among those telecommunications that may be a written record of an arbitration agreement. Under existing law, there are multiple crimes that may be committed by way of telegraphs and telegrams, including sending threats to public officers and employees, and officers and employees of public and private educational institutions. Existing law defines a financial institution to include a telegraph company for purposes of money laundering and keeping records of currency transactions that exceed $10,000 and reporting those transactions to the Department of Justice. Existing law further references telegraphs and telegraph equipment and facilities, which includes authorizing the transmission of a copy of a warrant or an abstract of a warrant via telegraph. This bill would delete references to telegraphs and telegrams in the Penal Code. By deleting those references, the bill would decriminalize conduct committed by way of telegraphs and telegrams. The bill would no longer require a telegraph company to report to the Department of Justice currency transactions that exceed $10,000. The bill also would no longer authorize the transmission of a warrant or abstract of warrant via telegraph. The California Constitution establishes the Public Utilities Commission and vests the commission with regulatory authority over public utilities, including telegraph corporations, subject to control by the Legislature. This bill would delete from the Public Utilities Code all references to telegraph corporations, and, consequently, would repeal the commission's statutory authority to regulate telegraph corporations. Existing law provides that, for purposes of the imposition of sales and use tax, tangible personal property does not include telephone and telegraph lines and the poles, towers, or conduits that support them or contain them. This bill would remove the reference to telegraph lines in the above-specified exception. Existing law authorizes the board of supervisors of any county to levy a utility user tax on the consumption of electricity, gas, water, sewer, telephone, telegraph, and cable television services in the unincorporated area of the county. This bill would remove the reference to telegraph services from the authorization described above. The bill would also make other nonsubstantive changes to these provisions.