A bill in the state legislature that would extend payments from PG&E to San Luis Obispo County public schools has been amended.
Instead of five years, the funding would now only be renewed for two years if Senate Bill 931 is enacted.
PG&E has historically sent money to the communities and schools near the Diablo Canyon Power Plant as a tax for operating a nuclear energy plant nearby, and also to provide a soft financial landing ahead of its planned closure.
A recipient of a large portion of that funding was the San Luis Coastal Unified School District.
Those payments under the Community Impacts Mitigation Program expired last year, when the nuclear plant was scheduled to close. When the plant’s operations were extended, the funding was not renewed.
In December, the San Luis Coastal Unified School District approved $5 million in budget cuts that were blamed, in part, on the lapse in payments from PG&E.
Authored by State Senator John Laird and coauthored by Assemblymember Dawn Addis, an earlier version of SB 931 would have replaced that funding until 2031, equaling $41.7 million.
However, the bill was amended while in the Assembly Utilities and Energy Committee last week.
Now, payments would end in 2028, amounting to nearly $16.7 million.
Addis told KCBX she was disappointed by the change.
“It's very, very unfortunate,” the assemblymember said. “While it's important that we get those funds for our local school district, it's very unfortunate that now the community is potentially getting even less.”
When asked about the potential gap in funding between 2028, when the payments expire, and 2030, when Diablo Canyon is scheduled to close, Addis said she is “ working every single day to make up that discrepancy.”
State Senator John Laird has also promised to preserve the payments if Diablo Canyon’s operations are extended past 2030.
Addis said she believed PG&E was not “agreeable” to the previous version of SB 931.
In an email, PG&E representative Carina Corral said the company had paid more than $185 million to San Luis Obispo County since 2018.
“The Legislature sets tax policy, including decisions on tax rates and regulations,” Corral wrote. “We are monitoring SB 931 and stand ready to implement it if approved by the State Assembly and signed by the Governor.”
An Assembly Utilities and Energy Committee staff report argued that the ambiguity over when Diablo Canyon will ultimately close was problematic.
“Requiring ratepayers statewide to fund a community mitigation program premised on decommissioning impacts, when decommissioning has been repeatedly deferred and may be deferred again, raises legitimate questions about whether this is an appropriate use of ratepayer funds,” the report said.
In April, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted Diablo Canyon a 20-year license renewal.
The staff report also questioned whether ratepayers across California “should bear the cost of local government services in San Luis Obispo County.”
Ben Lippert is a member of a group called the San Luis Coastal Parent Information Network, which has advocated for reinstating payments from PG&E to local schools.
Lippert told KCBX he wanted SB 931 to have a longer shelf life.
“I think we're disappointed, because we were looking for funding that lasted until the end of operations,” he said.
Lippert’s children attend Los Ranchos Elementary, and he said one reason he cares about the issue is because of cutbacks at the school.
According to the SLO Tribune, budget cuts late last year left San Luis Coastal Unified School District’s elementary schools, including Los Ranchos, with no full-time librarian.
“I think that there's a bigger question, though, about the plant operating and not sort of paying its fair share, whether that's through property taxes, mitigation funding, or whatever system you kind of can create,” Lippert said. “That's something that concerns me both as a parent and as a resident of SLO.”
The amended version of SB 931 now heads to the State Assembly’s Committee on Appropriations.
Disclosure: PG&E is a financial supporter of KCBX.
