Session Laws

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:

Notwithstanding the provisions of any general or special law to the contrary, in addition to the assessments authorized in sections seventeen and eighteen of chapter twenty-five of the General Law, the department of public utilities is hereby authorized to make an assessment against each gas company under the jurisdictional control of the department, based upon the intrastate operating revenues of each of said companies derived from sales within the commonwealth of gas and gas service as shown in the most recent annual report of each of said companies to the department. Said assessment shall be determined and certified by the department as sufficient to produce two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in revenue to be allocated among such companies in the proportion that each company's share of such operating revenues bears to the total operating revenues of all such companies in the commonwealth during the previous calendar year. The assessment under this section may be credited to the normal operating cost of each company. The funds produced by such assessment shall be placed in an account to be drawn upon by the department from year to year until depletion and shall be used by the department, in addition to other funds appropriated, to assist in defraying the general operating expenses and other expenses of the department relating to the regulation of gas companies.

The department shall, on or before the first Wednesday of June following passage of this act and every six months thereafter until depletion of said assessed funds, file a report with the clerks of the senate and house of representatives and with the senate and house committees on ways and means describing in detail to which expenses said funds were applied and their relation to the regulation of gas companies.