BOARD00985

• Board Meeting Date: 2/5/1969
• Description: Agenda or Table of Contents, Minutes, Memos
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

most difficult. Theory and reality are often
worlds apart.

I

We have a constitutional amendment.
Article XII of the state constitution. which
creates a state civil service system. I am
not going to argue the merits or the demerits
of that system. It has both. Nevertheless.
to create some separate agency we were faced
with the fact that a separate agency or the
members of that agency would be under civil
service. If we created one state agency of
five people to adjudicate water rights. not
administer. but adjudicate water rights. then
we had five people who would be under the
civil service system. Or if we created four
or five independent boards around the state.
they became independent agencies of the state
of Colorado under the civil service system.

1

We next tried to determine how we could
work within the framework of the civil service
system. TO us there was one obvious solution.
Bring the commission in under the framework of
an existing agency which has a fairly large
staff. Then if you create four commissions.
that agency. if some member of the commission
in the Arkansas Valley is unsatisfactory. can
transfer that member of the commission to
some other place or put him back with the
parent agency. Under civil service we can
hire consultants in any area of the state to
make up the membership of the commissions.
We tried to create the maximum flexibility
that is possible under the law. If we had a
complaint in the South Platte River basin
about three commission members. we could do
something which we couldn't do if that were
an autonomous independent agency.

Whatever agency does this complicated
job. it must have a staff to back it up.
Should we create another independent staff
for this agency? We think not. We have a
staff for this Board which has been working