Existing law, the California Emergency Services Act establishes the Office of Emergency Services in the office of the Governor and provides that the office is responsible for the state’s emergency and disaster response services for natural, technological, or manmade disasters and emergencies.
This bill would establish the Community Power Resiliency Program (program), to be administered by the Office of Emergency Services, to support local governments in priority areas including schools, elections offices, food storage reserves, COVID-19 testing sites, and traffic signals and street lamps. governments’ efforts to improve energy resiliency in response to deenergization events and
to mitigate the loss of electricity occurring from any other event, as provided. The bill would authorize the office to allocate specified sums, pursuant to an appropriation by the Legislature, to local governments, special districts, and tribes for various purposes relating to power resiliency, and would require those entities applying
for funding certain entities, in order to be eligible for funding, to either describe the portion of their emergency plan that includes power outages or provide an attestation confirm that power outages will be included when the entity revises any portion of their emergency plan. Cities, special districts and tribes would be eligible, under the provisions of this bill, to apply for competitive grants, while counties would be allocated a noncompetitive amount based on population and required to spend at least 50% of funds in priority areas. to
be divided between all counties based upon population. The bill would require the office to provide an annual report to certain committees of the Legislature detailing specified information, and to monitor, track, and report to the Legislature information regarding specific projects. The bill would authorize the office to retain up to 3% of the total appropriation and would require the office to administer the program.
The bill would specify that the Legislature intends to enact future legislation to transfer $100,000,000 from the General Fund to the Office of Emergency Services for the program.
The bill would specify sums which
that would be allocated to the entities if the Legislature enacts future legislation to allocate only $50,000,000 to the office for the program.