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Hibbs v. Colorado Dep't of Revenue10/7/2004
s involving commercial motor vehicles. Only the one-year revocation order is at issue here.
The district court granted a stay of the one-year revocation order and, upon review, reversed the order and directed the Department to reinstate Hibbs's license. The court concluded that (1) the Department had violated § 42-2-126(3)(b), C.R.S. 2003, by holding the revocation hearing without having received a "verified report" from the police officer; and (2) by failing to notify Hibbs that it was seeking a one-year revocation of his commercial license, the Department violated his statutory and constitutional due process rights.
The Department contends that the district court erred in determining that the Department lacked jurisdiction to revoke Hibbs's commercial driver's license for one year based on the arresting officer's failure to provide the Department with a verified report of all information relevant to the action. We disagree.
Pursuant to § 42-2-126(3)(b), A law enforcement officer who has probable cause to believe that a person was driving a commercial motor vehicle with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.04 or more . . . shall forward to the department a verified report of all information relevant to the enforcement action, including information that adequately identifies the person, a statement of the officer's probable cause for belief that the person committed such violation, a report of the results of any tests that were conducted, and a copy of the citation and complaint, if any, filed with the court.
(Emphasis added.)
Our primary duty in construing a statute is to give effect to the General Assembly's intent, which we accomplish by first examining the statutory language. Garhart ex rel. Tinsman v. Columbia/Healthone, L.L.C., 95 P.3d 571 (Colo. 2004). In determining legislative intent, " e afford the statutory language its ordinary and common meaning, giving effect to every term and provision." Telluride Resort & Spa , L.P. v. Colo. Dep't of Revenue, 40 P.3d 1260, 1265 (Colo. 2002) (emphasis added).
Here, giving effect to "every" term in § 42-2-126(3)(b), we conclude that, with respect to proceedings involving a driver of a commercial motor vehicle with an excessive blood alcohol content, the General Assembly intended to require a police officer to provide the Department not merely a report, but, rather, a "verified" report.
Although the term "verified" is not defined in the statute, we can discern the General Assembly's intended meaning of the term by reviewing the legislative history of § 42-2-126(3)(a), C.R.S. 2003, the provision pertaining to revocation proceedings for those persons having a BAC of 0.10 or more while driving "any vehicle." Before the 1989 amendments of former § 42-2-126(3)(a), the statute required, as in the current version of § 42-2-126(3)(b), that a police officer forward a "verified report of all information relevant to the enforcement action" to the Department. Colo. Sess. Laws 1988, ch. 293, § 42-2-122.1(2)(a) at 1360; see Alford v. Tipton, 822 P.2d 513, 515 (Colo. App. 1991). In the current § 42-2-126(3)(a), as amended, however, the General Assembly deleted the requirement that the police officer's report be verified and, instead, required only that "an affidavit" be provided. In addition, the General Assembly specified that the "affidavit shall be dated, signed, and sworn to by the law enforcement officer under penalty of perjury, but need not be notarized or sworn to before any other person." See § 42-2-126(3)(a) (emphasis added); Alford v. Tipton, supra.
Based on this legislative history, we conclude that the General Assembly's intended meaning of "verified report" is a repo
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