HBA-JLV C.S.H.B. 2977 77(R)BILL ANALYSIS Office of House Bill AnalysisC.S.H.B. 2977 By: Dukes Land & Resource Management 4/20/2001 Committee Report (Substituted) BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Impervious ground cover regulations limit the percentage of property that can be used for building or expanding. Southwestern Bell (SWB) is mandated by state law to serve customers in its certified area. SWB has seen tremendous demand for services and increases in the average number of lines per household. The Federal Communications Commission has mandated that SWB provide space in central offices for competitors to collocate for interconnection purposes. Central offices built years ago may need to be expanded, but have in many cases become landlocked residentially or commercially and in some cases by city purchase. Because of central offices becoming landlocked and impervious ground cover rules, SWB may have to initiate condemnation procedures to acquire needed land. C.S.H.B. 2977 provides that additional suitable vacant land contiguous with a proposed site sufficient to satisfy the impervious lot coverage regulation or sedimentation, retention, or erosion regulation must be available through purchase or grant for a regulating authority to deny a request to expand a critical facility. RULEMAKING AUTHORITY It is the opinion of the Office of House Bill Analysis that this bill does not expressly delegate any additional rulemaking authority to a state officer, department, agency, or institution. ANALYSIS C.S.H.B. 2977 amends the Local Government Code to require a regulating authority to approve or deny a written request by a telecommunications utility to expand a critical facility on real property owned, leased, or occupied by the telecommunications utility in an area governed by impervious lot coverage regulation or sedimentation, retention, or erosion regulation not later then the 60th day after the date the request is received. The regulating authority is required to approve the request unless the regulating authority finds, after a hearing, that: _additional, suitable vacant land contiguous with the proposed building site that is sufficient to satisfy the impervious lot coverage regulation or sedimentation, retention, or erosion regulation is not available, except through the use of condemnation or at a price that exceeds the average fair market value of vacant land within a one-mile radius of the property; or _the telecommunications utility did not provide an affidavit containing the aforementioned statement. The bill requires the regulatory authority to provide written notice of a denial that specifies the findings on which the authority relied in denying the request. If a regulating authority does not make a decision before the 60th day, the request is approved and the regulating authority is prohibited from applying the authority's impervious lot coverage regulations or sedimentation, retention, or erosion regulations to the property. The bill provides that the Public Utility Commission of Texas has jurisdiction to enforce the provisions of the Act and to ensure that legal requirements are enforced in a competitively neutral, non-discriminatory, and reasonable manner. The bill defines a critical facility as a central office that contains a switching unit for a telecommunications system that provides service to the general public and equipment and operating arrangements necessary for terminating and interconnecting trunks or customer lines and trunks. EFFECTIVE DATE September 1, 2001. COMPARISON OF ORIGINAL TO SUBSTITUTE C.S.H.B. 2977 modifies the original to require a regulating authority to approve or deny a written request by a telecommunications utility to expand an existing critical facility in an area governed by an impervious lot coverage regulation not later than the 60th day, rather than the 30th day, after the delivery of the request to the regulating authority. The substitute restricts the applicability of these provisions to the expansion, rather than construction or expansion, of a critical facility and sets forth the definition of critical facility.