Food assistance: disasters: utilities.

Plain English Breakdown

The official source material does not provide details about how the report to the Legislature will be used.

Disaster Food Assistance and Utility Data Sharing

AB-777 requires utility companies to share outage data with the Department of Social Services to improve disaster food assistance programs.

What This Bill Does

• Authorizes the Public Utilities Commission and local publicly owned electric utilities to establish agreements for sharing data.
• Requires electrical corporations and local publicly owned electric utilities to provide aggregated customer outage data within a week if requested by the department.
• Directs the Department of Social Services to use utility data to improve disaster food assistance programs like D-SNAP.

Who It Names or Affects

• The State Department of Social Services
• Public Utilities Commission
• Electrical corporations and local publicly owned electric utilities

Terms To Know

D-SNAP

Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides food assistance during disasters.

CalFresh

California's version of the federal SNAP program that helps people buy groceries.

Limits and Unknowns

• The bill does not specify how much data sharing will cost or who pays for it.
• It is unclear what happens if utility companies do not share the required outage data on time.

Official Summary Text

AB 777, Celeste Rodriguez.
Food assistance: disasters: utilities.
Existing federal law provides for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), known in California as CalFresh, under which supplemental nutrition assistance benefits allocated to the state by the federal government are distributed to eligible individuals by each county. Existing federal law, through the federal Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (D-SNAP), provides for short-term food assistance benefits to families suffering in the wake of a major disaster. Existing law requires the State Department of Social Services and the county human services agency, if the President of the United States issues a major disaster declaration for individual assistance, to request to operate D-SNAP for the regions affected by the major disaster. Existing uncodified law, in the event of a declaration by the Governor or the President of the United States of a major
disaster, continuously appropriates to the department from the General Fund an amount necessary to cover specified costs relating to the administration of disaster food assistance services, but not to exceed $300,000 per disaster declaration.
Existing law vests the Public Utilities Commission with regulatory authority over public utilities, including electrical corporations, while local publicly owned electric utilities are under the direction of their governing boards. Under existing law, a violation of any order, decision, rule, direction, demand, or requirement of the commission is a crime.
This bill would authorize
the commission and the governing boards of local publicly owned electric utilities to establish any memoranda of understanding or other agreements necessary to direct electrical corporations and local publicly owned electric utilities to timely provide data to the department to maximize food assistance, as provided.
The bill would require electrical corporations and local publicly owned electric utilities to make a reasonable effort to provide aggregated customer outage data, for outages of 4 hours or longer, within 7 calendar days of a request from the department, as specified. The bill would require the department to maximize the amount of assistance requested and received through D-SNAP and all other federally funded nutrition assistance, including utilizing that provided utility data, in order to timely seek automated mass replacement of specified federally funded nutrition assistance programs. The bill would require the department, on or before December 31, 2026, to submit a report to the Legislature related to food assistance, as specified.
This bill would require electrical
corporations and local publicly owned electric utilities
to have a point of contact for the department as necessary to provide the requested data. The bill would require the commission to provide technical assistance to the department, including technical assistance to support the above-described report. Because a violation of a commission action implementing the bill’s requirements would be a crime, and by imposing additional duties on local publicly owned electric utilities, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.
The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts
for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement.
This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for specified reasons.

Current Bill Text

Download Bill PDF