Water expert Gregory Hobbs to retire from Colorado Supreme Court

Gregory Hobbs, an associate justice on the Colorado Supreme Court who is widely regarded as one of the state’s foremost experts on water law, will retire on Aug. 31 after nearly 20 years on the state’s highest court, Hobbs announced Friday.

Appointed to the Supreme Court by Gov. Roy Romer in 1996, Hobbs was retained twice by Colorado voters.

He previously had been in private practice at Hobbs Trout & Raley and Davis Graham & Stubbs, served as an enforcement attorney for the federal Environmental Protection Agency. He also was a Colorado assistant attorney general in that office’s natural resources section.

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In 2010, Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis, a former congressman, was accused of plagiarizing Hobbs’ written work as part of a project on water policy. McInnis, who blamed a research assistant for failing to provide adequate footnotes, eventually was cleared of any wrongdoing by the state Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel, but the exoneration came after he had lost to Dan Maes in the GOP primary. In November 2010, an otherwise banner year for Republican candidates, Maes garnered just 10 percent of the vote against Gov. John Hickenlooper.

The Colorado Supreme Court Nominating Commission will meet June 8-9 in Denver to interview candidates and select nominees for gubernatorial appointment to fill the vacancy left by Hobbs’ retirement.

The current annual salary for the position is $157,710, and the initial term of office is a provisional two years. Incumbent justices then serve 10-year terms if retained by voters.