BILL ANALYSIS 1
SENATE ENERGY, UTILITIES AND COMMUNICATIONS COMMITTEE
DEBRA BOWEN, CHAIRWOMAN
AB 2447 - Diaz Hearing Date:
June 22, 2004 A
As Amended: April 29, 2004 FISCAL B
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DESCRIPTION
Current law requires the California Public Utilities Commission
(CPUC) to provide various reports to the Legislature, including
its annual work plan and a compilation of rules and procedures,
as well as reports on electricity costs for agriculture, a
clearinghouse for women and minorities business database, and
utility expenditures on regulatory and other CPUC authorized
activities.
Current law requires the CPUC allow people to submit informal
complaints to the CPUC from its web site.
Current law requires the CPUC to post on its Internet web site
an annual report that's due to the Legislature on the number of
customers served by public utilities, the number of California
residents employed by the public utility, and much more.
This bill requires the CPUC to post on its Internet website a
list of the reports it's required to file with the Legislature
and the status of those reports.
This bill requires the reports, once completed and submitted to
the Legislature, to be posted on the CPUC website for at least
five years, and in the case of one-time reports, for at least 10
years.
BACKGROUND
To help with its oversight of the CPUC and the various utility
industries, the Legislature requires the CPUC to report on
various programs and activities. Those reports are filed with
the Secretary of the Senate or Chief Clerk of the Assembly and
are available to the public upon request.
According to the author, the goal of this bill is not only to
provide the public with easier access to these reports, but also
to give the Legislature easier access to the reports and to
information regarding the status of incomplete reports by
requiring the CPUC to place status updates and links to the
reports on its website.
COMMENTS
1.Is This Bill Necessary? The CPUC already posts some of its
reports on its website. For example, a simple search using
the CPUC website search engine turned up the annual plans for
2003 and 2004, and a report to the Legislature on the
California Teleconnect Fund. The author and the committee may
wish to consider whether a bill is needed in order to achieve
the goal of having the CPUC post legislative reports on its
website, or whether a letter would accomplish the same goal.
2.Are The Timelines Appropriate? The bill requires the CPUC to
keep annual reports posted on its web site for five years and
keep one-time reports posted on the web site for ten years.
It's not clear why this is an appropriate time frame or
whether there's any expense to maintaining these reports
online for this length of time.
3.Would The Public Be Better Served By A Broader, More General
Approach? This bill is focused solely on reports that are
required to be delivered to the Legislature and requires them
to be posted on the CPUC's web site for five or ten years.
However, the CPUC develops a number of other documents -
reports not mandated by the Legislature, final and proposed
decisions, hearing agendas, and much more - that may also be
useful to the public. The vast majority of this information
is already available on the CPUC's web site. Rather than
statutorily plucking out one category of information and
requiring it to be placed on the CPUC's web site for a
specific amount of time, the author and committee may wish to
consider instead requiring the CPUC to develop a policy to
ensure all of its publicly available information is made
accessible on its web site.
PRIOR VOTES
Assembly Floor (77-0)
Assembly Appropriations Committee (21-0)
Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee (11-0)
POSITIONS
Sponsor:
Author
Support:
None on file
Oppose:
None on file
Jennie Bretschneider
AB 2447 Analysis
Hearing Date: June 22, 2004