Bar pilots: pilotage rates.

Existing law provides for the regulation and licensing of pilots for Monterey Bay and the Bays of San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun. Existing law also establishes, in the Transportation Agency, a Board of Pilot Commissioners for the Bays of San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun and prescribes the membership, functions, and duties of the board with regard to the licensure and regulation of bar pilots. Existing law prescribes the rates of bar pilotage fees required to be charged by pilots and paid by vessels inward and outward bound through those bays and requires the board to recommend that the Legislature, by statute, adopt a schedule of pilotage rates providing fair and reasonable return to pilots piloting vessels in those bays. Existing law also imposes, among other things, a board operations surcharge of up to 7.5% of all bar pilotage fees charged by bar pilots, which is paid into the State Treasury to the credit of the Board of Pilot Commissioners' Special Fund and continuously appropriated to the board to compensate the board and the agency for their services and expenses. Existing law authorizes the board to adjust the bar pilotage fees due to catastrophic cost increases, as specified. This bill would increase the bar pilotage rate, as specified. By increasing the rate of bar pilotage fees, which may thereby increase the amount of the board operations surcharge and the amount of moneys paid into the fund, the bill would make an appropriation. The bill would delete the authority of the board to adjust pilotage fees due to catastrophic cost increases and instead would require a surcharge to be imposed per each movement of a vessel using pilot services as is necessary and authorized by the board to recover the costs of the pilot associated with a catastrophic event, as specified. The bill, until January 1, 2023, would impose a movement fee on a vessel using pilotage services, as is necessary and authorized by the board, to recover a pilot's costs for the purchase of a new pilot dispatch system in 2021. The bill, until January 1, 2024, would also impose an additional movement fee on a vessel using pilotage services, as is necessary and authorized by the board, to recover a pilot's costs for deferred and current maintenance for pilot vessels between January 1, 2021, and October 1, 2023. The bill would also make other technical changes and delete obsolete provisions. This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.