Land use: development fees: audit.

Existing law, the Mitigation Fee Act, requires a local agency that establishes, increases, or imposes a fee as a condition of approval of a development project to, among other things, identify the purpose of the fee and the use to which the fee is to be put. Existing law requires a local agency to deposit those fees imposed for an improvement to serve the development project in a separate capital facilities account or fund and to expend those fees solely for the purpose for which the fees were collected. Existing law requires the local agency, after each fiscal year, to make public and to review specified information about each of those accounts or funds, including the amount of fees collected and the amount of the expenditures on each public improvement for the fiscal year. Existing law authorizes a person to request an audit to determine whether a fee or charge levied by a local agency exceeds the amount reasonably necessary to cover the cost of any product, public facility, or service provided by the local agency. If a local agency does not comply with the above-described disclosure requirement for 3 consecutive years, existing law prohibits the local agency from requiring that person to make a specified deposit and requires the local agency to pay the cost of the audit. This bill, additionally, would require that audit to include each consecutive year the local agency did not comply with the disclosure requirement. The bill would make clarifying changes to that provision.