2-07 House Committee Lay Over Unamended

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2-07 House Committee Lay Over Unamended Page 48 of 49 Rep. Hoppe: Rep. Pemy Madam Chair: Director GeOlxe: Thank you, Madam Chair. I didn't mean to interrupt you. Representative Penry, I appreciation your bringing the bill forward and maybe in terms ofconstmction of the bill I'm probably just a little more sensitive about Colorado's seven water basins. I'm hoping that if you're going to go back and re-craft this that you'll mention the major water basins because there are other basins that aren't listed in here. These are based on the visions in water _' I think to avoid some future criticism that would be a good thing to note. We're talking about the major basins. You bet. Madam Chair, and that's actually one issue that didn't come up today was the stmcture of the basin roundtables. Some others who weren't present today had some important recommendations on how to better stmcture those roundtables so as to be more cogent I think is probably the proper word because there are some groups that have a common interest that we've sort of set aside that shouldn't be set aside. So that's an issue we're going to address in the strike below. Representative Penry and all those who testified, I really appreciate all the time and thought that's gone into this. Since we're still kind of discussing, my intention is to lay the bill over for action on Wednesday. We do have a deadline, but while we have an opportunity Representative Penry, could you just tell us a little bit about this fiscal note and my understanding is that this is a cash fund expenditure that's going to come as a transfer I think from - I'm not sure what the name of that fund is - legal protection fund - something - but can we get an explanation for the committee on how this effort would be financed? Director George. Madam Chair, Russell George, Department of Natural Resources. The fiscal note was developed by CWCB. It's our expectation that as the bill is presently crafted that my office would absorb the same level of work we're doing now. CWCB staff would certainly be our mainline staff and the 260,000 or so that's shown there was the next year's initial stali -u p effort so far. In the best of worlds, these kinds of water efforts affect us all and should appropriately be funded by us all. That's the history in Colorado water anyway, as you'd know and that means general fund. Well we all know that's not going to happen this year. So we look at the other funds available to us in natural resources and primarily these days that's severance tax. There are a lot of demands on severance tax, all of which are legitimate. We've been looking at the numbers. It's always a little soon at this point www.escriptionist.com Page 48 of 49