Vehicle weight fees: transportation bond debt service.

(1) Existing law imposes weight fees on the registration of commercial motor vehicles and provides for the deposit of net weight fee revenues into the State Highway Account. Existing law provides for the transfer of certain weight fee revenues from the State Highway Account to the Transportation Debt Service Fund to reimburse the General Fund for payment of debt service on general obligation bonds issued for transportation purposes. Existing law also provides for the transfer of certain weight fee revenues to the Transportation Bond Direct Payment Account for direct payment of debt service on designated bonds, which are defined to be certain transportation general obligation bonds issued pursuant to Proposition 1B of 2006. Existing law also provides for loans of weight fee revenues to the General Fund to the extent the revenues are not needed for bond debt service purposes, with the loans to be repaid when the revenues are later needed for those purposes, as specified. This bill would repeal these provisions, thereby retaining the weight fee revenues in the State Highway Account. The bill would make other conforming changes in that regard. (2) Existing law provides for the deposit of fuel excise tax revenues imposed by the state on fuels used in motor vehicles upon public streets and highways in the Highway Users Tax Account, and appropriates those revenues to various purposes. Existing law, with respect to the portion of these revenues that is derived from increases in the motor vehicle fuel excise tax beginning in 2010, requires an allocation of revenues to reimburse the State Highway Account for the amount of weight fee revenues that the State Highway Account is not receiving due to use of weight fee revenues to pay debt service on transportation general obligation bonds and to make certain loans to the General Fund, with the remaining amount of this portion of revenues allocated 44% to the State Transportation Improvement Program, 12% to the State Highway Operation and Protection Program, and 44% to city and county streets and roads. This bill, with respect to the portion of these revenues that is derived from increases in the motor vehicle fuel excise tax beginning in 2010, would instead require 56% of the revenues to be deposited by the Controller in the State Highway Account and 44% to be allocated by the Controller to city and county streets and roads. This bill would require a minimum of 21.453% of the revenues deposited in the State Highway Account under these provisions to be allocated to the State Highway Operation and Protection Program. The bill would thereby make an appropriation. (3) This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute, with certain provisions to become operative on July 1, 2014.