(a) The authority may fix, revise, charge, and collect rates, rents, fees, and charges for the use of and for the services furnished or to be furnished by each project, and may contract with any person, partnership, association or corporation, or other body, public or private, in respect thereof. These rates, rents, fees, and charges shall be fixed and adjusted in respect of the aggregate of rents, rates, fees, and charges from the project so as to provide funds sufficient with other revenues or moneys, if any, to accomplish all of the following:

(1) Pay the cost of maintaining, repairing, and operating the project and each and every portion thereof, to the extent that the payment of that cost has not otherwise been adequately provided for.

(2) Pay the principal of, and the interest on, outstanding bonds of the authority issued in respect of that project as the same shall become due and payable.

(3) Create and maintain reserves required or provided for in any resolution authorizing, or trust agreement securing, bonds of the authority.

(b) (1) The rates, rents, fees, and charges referenced in subdivision (a) are not subject to supervision or regulation by any department, commission, board, body, bureau, or agency of this state other than the authority. A sufficient amount of the revenues derived in respect of a project, except a part of those revenues that is necessary to pay the cost of maintenance, repair, and operation and to provide reserves for renewals, replacements, extensions, enlargements, and improvements as may be provided for in the resolution authorizing the issuance of any bonds of the authority or in the trust agreement securing the same, shall be set aside at regular intervals provided in the resolution or trust agreement in a sinking or other similar fund.

(2) The fund established pursuant to paragraph (1) is pledged to, and charged with, the payment of the principal of and the interest on, the bonds as the same shall become due, and the redemption price or the purchase price of bonds retired by call or purchase as therein provided.

(3) The pledge required by paragraph (2) shall be valid and binding from the time when the pledge is made. The rates, rents, fees and charges and other revenues or other moneys so pledged and thereafter received by the authority shall immediately be subject to the lien of the pledge without any physical delivery thereof or further act, and the lien of that pledge shall be valid and binding as against all parties having claims of any kind in tort, contract, or otherwise against the authority, irrespective of whether the parties have notice thereof. Neither the resolution nor any trust agreement by which a pledge is created need be filed or recorded except in the records of the authority.

(4) The use and disposition of moneys to the credit of the sinking or other similar fund shall be subject to the resolution authorizing the issuance of those bonds or of that trust agreement. Except as may otherwise be provided in that resolution or that trust agreement, the sinking or other similar fund shall be a fund for all of those bonds issued to finance projects at a participating college, or bonds issued to finance a project of a participating nonprofit entity, without distinction or priority of one over another.

(5) The authority, in the resolution or trust agreement, may provide that the sinking or other similar fund shall be either of the following:

(A) The fund for a particular project at a participating college and for the bonds issued to finance a particular project and may, additionally, permit and provide for the issuance of bonds having a subordinate lien in respect of the security herein authorized to other bonds of the authority and, in this case, the authority may create separate sinking or other similar funds in respect of those subordinate lien bonds.

(B) The fund for a particular project of a participating nonprofit entity.

(Amended by Stats. 2002, Ch. 1081, Sec. 4. Effective January 1, 2003.)