Hazardous materials management: Rural CUPA Reimbursement Account.

Hadwick’s measure reframes rural hazardous materials funding by widening eligibility for the Rural CUPA Reimbursement Account to every California county with a population under 150,000, contingent on annual appropriations. This expansion builds on the existing framework that supports counties with older certification or specific implementation status, and it explicitly ties expanded access to future budget decisions rather than an automatic grant of funds. The core objective is to align state support with smaller counties’ costs of implementing the unified hazardous materials program, subject to available resources.

The Rural CUPA Reimbursement Account would be established in the General Fund, and the secretary would allocate funds to eligible counties to cover a portion of the budgeted costs of implementing the unified program. Allocation is subject to a per-county cap of 60,000 dollars and is scaled by county population: up to 75 percent of budgeted costs for counties under 70,000; up to 50 percent for counties 70,000 to under 100,000; and up to 35 percent for counties 100,000 to under 150,000. In addition, the secretary may not allocate more than 60,000 dollars for all CUPAs within a single eligible county. Counties must ensure a single fee system, with fees set according to a workload analysis that estimates direct and indirect costs of implementing the program, so total revenues (state funding plus CUPA fees) cover the necessary costs under the implementation agreement with the secretary.

Implementation relies on existing regulatory structures for the unified program, with no new regulatory standards introduced by this measure. The allocation framework is contingent on appropriation, and eligible counties must operate under the implementation agreements established under current law. The measure preserves the role of the Secretary for Environmental Protection in administering the program and supervising allocations, while clarifying the fiscal mechanism that supports rural CUPAs.

Broader implications center on fiscal and administrative considerations. Expanding eligibility increases the pool of counties eligible for state funding, but actual disbursement depends on legislative appropriations in each budget cycle. The combination of state funding and local fees will shape how counties budget for the unified program and may influence local cost-sharing arrangements with regulated entities. Administrative requirements—namely workload analyses and the establishment of a single fee system—create additional planning and reporting obligations for CUPAs, with funding requests and allocations aligned to the Legislature’s appropriation process and the secretary’s implementation oversight.