§ 24-1-101 — Legislative declaration

(1) The general assembly declares that
this article 1 is necessary to create a structure of state government that is
responsive to the needs of the people of this state and sufficiently flexible to meet
changing conditions; to strengthen the powers of the governor and provide a
reasonable span of administrative and budgetary controls within an orderly
organizational structure of state government; to strengthen the role of the general
assembly in state government; to encourage greater participation of the public in
state government; to effect the grouping of state agencies into a limited number of
principal departments primarily according to function; and to eliminate overlapping
and duplication of effort. To the ends stated in this section, this article 1 shall be
liberally construed.

(2) Since the general assembly enacted the Administrative Organization Act
of 1968, which laid out the structure of the principal departments, assigned and
transferred every entity into a principal department, and specified whether the
entity was transferred by a type 1 or type 2 transfer or abolished by a type 3 transfer, the general assembly has determined that:

(a) The transfer language used in this article 1 is overly complicated, and the
concept that a new entity obtains or retains its powers as if it were transferred,
based on a reorganization that occurred in 1968, is an awkward way of expressing
the entity's status;

(b) While the status of an entity is expressed in this article 1, the type 1 or type 2 status of the entity often is not specified in the organic statute that governs
the entity, which is where a reader would typically look for this information;

(c) While there were many references to type 3 transfers by which entities
were historically abolished, in 2022 the terminology used in the statutes was
modernized to simply identify the new entity responsible for the powers, duties, and
functions of the abolished entity without the use of the archaic type 3 transfer
language; and

(d) The Colorado Revised Statutes would be improved by modernizing the
means by which an entity's status is designated and the way in which an entity's
powers, duties, and functions are expressed in the Administrative Organization Act
of 1968 and in the organic statute where the entity is created.

Legislative History

Source: L. 68: p. 73, � 1. C.R.S. 1963: � 3-28-1. L. 2022: Entire section amended, (SB 22-162), ch. 469, p. 3349, � 2, effective August 10.