Can a California special water district hire its own staff or contract with an outside vendor for staff, when the district's enabling statute says it may contract with two named partner agencies for staff services?

Plain-English summary

The Fox Canyon Groundwater Management Agency was created by the Legislature in 1982 to manage groundwater in the Oxnard Plain Basin in Ventura County. Its enabling statute (Water Code Appendix section 121-408) says: "The agency may contract with the county or United for staff and other services and may hire such other contractors and consultants as it considers appropriate." Ventura County Counsel asked the AG whether the Agency could go beyond those two partners and hire its own staff or contract with a private staffing firm.

The AG said no. The statute draws a clear line between "staff and other services" (which can come only from the County of Ventura or the United Water Conservation District) and "other contractors and consultants" (which can come from anywhere the Agency considers appropriate). The Legislature wrote the same kind of statute differently for a comparable agency in Ojai, where the staff-source restriction is absent. That contrast confirms the limit is intentional. Implied powers cannot expand around an express restriction, and Government Code section 53060's authority to contract for "special services" doesn't reach routine staff functions like preparing reports, plans, and budgets.

Practical effect: the Agency stays a thin governing body that buys staff capacity from one of two designated public-agency partners. It can still bring in non-staff contractors, like the technical consulting firm it hired for its five-year groundwater sustainability plan evaluation.

What this means for you

If you direct or sit on the board of a special district with a similar staffing statute

Read your enabling act for the same kind of clause. If your statute names specific partner agencies for "staff and other services" without saying "and any other source the agency selects," treat that list as exhaustive. Going outside it without a statutory amendment creates exposure on three fronts: contract validity (the underlying staffing arrangement may be ultra vires), public-records litigation (third parties can challenge the structure), and audit findings.

If your district has been quietly using a private staffing firm or hiring direct employees in violation of the enabling act, raise it with counsel before the next budget cycle. The remedies are usually statutory (lobby for an amendment or for a more flexible enabling-act revision) or structural (move the work to one of the listed partners and pay them through the contract instead).

If you are county counsel or general counsel to a partner public agency

When the special district your jurisdiction supports comes asking for "non-traditional" staffing arrangements, this opinion is your reference point. Be ready to draft a memorandum that walks through the enabling act, identifies the express list of staff sources, and says no to anything outside it. The AG's analysis tracks standard statutory-interpretation canons (noscitur a sociis, ejusdem generis, the "different words mean different things" rule), so you can rely on it for similar enabling-act questions in your county.

If you are a private staffing or consulting firm pitching a special district

Don't assume "we can hire consultants" means "we can hire you for staff functions." This opinion draws a hard line: ongoing routine work (reports, plans, budgets, internal operations) is staff work and must come from the listed public partners. Project-bounded technical or specialized work (a five-year groundwater plan evaluation, a one-time engineering analysis) can be a contract for services. If your scope of work looks like a permanent FTE-equivalent, the district probably can't hire you legally.

If you are a Ventura County or United Water Conservation District employee assigned to the Agency

Your role is statutorily protected in a sense. The Agency cannot replace you with a private vendor or in-house hire. That has implications for collective bargaining, civil service protections, and benefits. If staff arrangements are restructured, the change has to flow through your home agency, not the Agency itself.

Background and statutory framework

The Fox Canyon Groundwater Management Agency Act was enacted in 1982 to address seawater intrusion into the Oxnard Plain Basin. A 1979 State Water Board investigation had found seawater intrusion across 20 square miles of the basin despite local mitigation. Ventura County and the United Water Conservation District asked the Legislature to authorize a new agency to coordinate the response. The Act sits at Water Code Appendix sections 121-102 through 121-1105, alongside dozens of other special-district enabling acts collected in the Water Code Appendix.

Section 121-408 is the staffing provision: "The agency may contract with the county or United for staff and other services and may hire such other contractors and consultants as it considers appropriate." The first half is the "may contract with" clause; the second is the "may hire other contractors and consultants" clause. The opinion treats them as two distinct authorities, with the first restricted to two named partners and the second open-ended.

Section 121-102 contains a general-purposes clause giving the Agency "such other powers as are reasonably implied and necessary and proper to carry out the objectives and purposes of the agency." That implied-powers grant cannot override the express staffing restriction in section 121-408.

Government Code section 53060 lets any local agency contract for "special services and advice in financial, economic, accounting, engineering, legal, or administrative matters." Courts read "special" to mean unique, unusual, or out-of-the-ordinary. Routine staff functions do not qualify, so section 53060 does not provide a back door around the section 121-408 restriction.

Common questions

Can the Agency hire one direct employee, like an executive director? Not under the enabling statute as written. Section 121-408 channels all staff sourcing through Ventura County or United Water Conservation District. Even a single FTE has to be a County or United employee assigned to the Agency.

What about temporary staffing through a private firm to cover a vacancy? The opinion treats "staff" broadly, applying the dictionary definition of personnel responsible for the internal operations of an institution. A temporary staffing firm placing personnel in those internal-operations roles would still violate section 121-408. The temporary nature does not change the analysis.

Could the Agency contract with a third public agency that is not the County or United? The statute names only those two. There is no exception for other public agencies. If the Agency wanted to draw staff from, say, the Calleguas Municipal Water District, it would need a statutory amendment.

The statute says "other contractors and consultants as it considers appropriate." How wide is that? Wide for non-staff work. The Agency has used it to hire technical consulting firms for project-bounded work, like the five-year evaluation of its groundwater sustainability plan. The dividing line is not who the contractor is, but what they are doing: ongoing internal operations versus discrete specialized services.

Does this opinion apply to other special districts? Only directly to Fox Canyon. But the analytical method (close reading of the enabling act, comparison with sibling statutes, restraint on implied powers) applies generally to any special district whose enabling act lists specific staff partners. The 1991 Ojai Basin Groundwater Management Agency Act is the cleanest contrast: its parallel section says "may contract for staff and other services" with no named partners, and the AG read that omission as deliberate.

Citations

• Water Code Appendix section 121-408 (Fox Canyon staffing provision)
• Water Code Appendix section 121-102 (general purposes and implied powers)
• Water Code Appendix section 131-409 (Ojai Basin parallel provision)
• Government Code section 53060 (special services and advice contracts)
• Tuolumne Jobs & Small Business Alliance v. Superior Court (2014) 59 Cal.4th 1029 (statutory interpretation framework)
• Wildlife Alive v. Chickering (1976) 18 Cal.3d 190 (express grants imply negative limits)

Source

• Landing page: https://oag.ca.gov/opinions/yearly-index
• Original PDF: https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/opinions/pdfs/24-101.pdf

Original opinion text

TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS
OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
State of California
ROB BONTA
Attorney General
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OPINION
of
ROB BONTA
Attorney General
SUSAN DUNCAN LEE
Deputy Attorney General

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No. 24-101
January 22, 2025

The HONORABLE TIFFANY NORTH, COUNTY COUNSEL FOR THE
COUNTY OF VENTURA, has requested an opinion on a question relating to a groundwater management district's statutory hiring power. QUESTION PRESENTED AND CONCLUSION The Fox Canyon Groundwater Management Agency was created by the Legislature, as reflected in Water Code Appendix sections 121-102 to 121-1105. Does this statutory scheme allow the Agency to hire its own staff, or to contract with an entity other than the County of Ventura or the United Water Conservation District for staff services?

No. The statutory scheme establishes the Agency's power to contract for staff services, and it limits that power to contracting with the two agencies specified in the statute, which are the County of Ventura and the United Water Conservation District.

BACKGROUND
The Fox Canyon Groundwater Management Agency is a special water agency created by the Legislature in 1982 to manage and conserve groundwater resources for agricultural, municipal, and industrial uses, for the common benefit of all water users. The Agency's formation was prompted by a State Water Board investigation into seawater intrusion beneath the Oxnard Plain Basin in Ventura County. Completed in 1979, the investigation found that seawater intrusion into the Oxnard Plain was affecting 20 square miles of the basin despite continuing local mitigation efforts. To address the seawater intrusion problem, Ventura County and the United Water Conservation District sought and obtained the Legislature's approval to establish the Agency.

To carry out its mission to preserve fresh groundwater resources, the Agency prepares annual work plans, budgets, and management reports; quarterly work plans and budget status reports; and monthly decision items such as ordinances and resolutions. Since its creation, the Agency has relied on contracts with Ventura County for its staffing needs.

ANALYSIS
The Ventura County Counsel has asked for our opinion as to whether Water Code Appendix section 121-408 permits the Agency to hire its own staff, or to contract with an entity other than the County of Ventura or the United Water Conservation District for staff services.

Familiar principles of statutory interpretation guide our consideration of this question. Our primary task in interpreting a statute is to determine the Legislature's intent, so that we can apply the statute in a way that carries out its intended purpose. In examining a statute's language, we are to give the words their ordinary, everyday meaning unless the context requires otherwise. The statutory language should be examined "in the context of the entire statute and the statutory scheme," and in a manner that gives significance to "every word, phrase, sentence, and part" of the legislative act.

We begin with the text. Here, we analyze a statute that defines the scope of the groundwater conservation district's hiring authority. The Agency's hiring power is set forth in section 121-408, which states:

The agency may contract with the county or United for staff and other services and may hire such other contractors and consultants as it considers appropriate.

On its face, this language addresses two categories of authority: (1) to contract with the County of Ventura or the United Water Conservation District for "staff and other services"; and (2) to hire "other contractors and consultants." These terms are not expressly defined by the Agency's enabling act, but we can understand their contours by referring to general authorities.

As to the first category of authority, the term "staff" is well understood as referring to the personnel responsible for the internal operations of an institution. The term "other services" is more vague, but by its association with the term "staff" we believe it may be fairly understood as including the kinds of things (besides staff) that either the County or United could be expected to provide to support the Agency's regular internal operations, such as office space, photocopying and other document management services, mail and delivery services, and the like.

As to the second category of "other contractors and consultants," we can understand more about these terms from their position and juxtaposition within the statute. Importantly, we believe that the term "other contractors and consultants" must necessarily mean something distinct from "staff and other services," otherwise there would be no point in using the two different phrases within the one statute. It is contrary to general principles of statutory construction to interpret a statute in a way that makes some of its words mere surplusage. Further, the words "contractors and consultants" are part of a longer phrase, i.e., "[the agency] may hire such other contractors and consultants as it considers appropriate." The words "such other" denote, again, a distinction between contractors and consultants on the one hand, and staff and other services on the other. And the words "as it considers appropriate" suggest a measure of discretion in the Agency about how to hire such assistance, if at all. Whereas the Agency can obtain "staff and other services" only from the County or United, it can retain "other contractors and consultants" from any source "it considers appropriate."

With those considerations in mind, we now consider whether the statute allows the Agency to hire its own staff, or to contract with an entity other than the County or United for staff services. We conclude that it does not. Because the Agency's second category of authority extends only to contracting for non-staff services, we conclude that the Agency may contract for staff only with the County or United.

Generally speaking, a statutory grant of authority is considered to carry the implied negative that no power may be exercised which is more than the authority granted. That general principle supports the view that, by expressly authorizing the Agency to "contract with the county or United for staff and other services," the Legislature foreclosed the Agency from contracting with other entities for staff services.

Significantly, the Legislature made a different choice in another, comparable enactment. The enabling legislation for the Ojai Basin Groundwater Management Agency was enacted in 1991 and otherwise echoes section 121-408. In contrast to section 121-408, however, the Ojai agency's enabling legislation provides: "The agency may contract for staff and other services and may hire other contractors and consultants." The difference in language is clear, and strongly suggests that the restrictive phrase "with the county or United" in section 121-408 was meant to limit the Agency's staffing options.

Of course, we should consider the text of section 121-408 not only within itself, but also as it relates to the whole statutory scheme of which it is a part. The statutory scheme reveals that the Agency has implied powers to carry out its objectives and purposes in addition to its express powers. The Fox Canyon Groundwater Management Agency Act provides that the Agency "shall exercise the powers granted by this act for purposes of groundwater management within the boundaries of the agency, together with such other powers as are reasonably implied and necessary and proper to carry out the objectives and purposes of the agency."

But we see no basis for concluding that the Agency has implied power to hire personnel to assist in administering the regular business of the district. Section 121-102 itself limits the Agency's implied powers to those that are "necessary and proper to carry out the objectives and purposes of the agency." Some reasonable level of staffing is certainly necessary to carry out the agency's work, but section 121-408 does not leave the Agency bereft of staff; it merely limits the Agency to a hiring pool consisting of staff that have been hired through the County or through United. The implied powers doctrine may not be used to circumvent this express restriction on the Agency's contracting authority.

Furthermore, when a statute prescribes the manner and mode by which a power may be exercised, courts have held that the mode prescribed is the measure of the power. In other words, by expressly providing that the Agency may contract for staff services with either the County or United, section 121-408 both grants a measure of authority and prescribes the mode of exercising that authority. Were the Agency to engage a different party to provide staff services, it would be disregarding the mode prescribed by the Legislature for hiring staff. All points considered, we find no support in the Agency's enabling legislation for concluding that the Agency may hire its own staff, or contract with an entity other than the County of Ventura or the United Water Conservation District for staff services.

Finally, we consider whether the Agency might derive its hiring authority from another source. Beyond its enabling legislation, the Agency has the same authority as any other special district to contract for "special services and advice" under Government Code section 53060, which provides in pertinent part:

The legislative body of any public or municipal corporation or district may contract with and employ any persons for the furnishing to the corporation or district special services and advice in financial, economic, accounting, engineering, legal, or administrative matters if such persons are specially trained and experienced and competent to perform the special services required.

By its express terms, Government Code section 53060 is limited to contracting for "special services and advice." The term "special services" has been construed by courts to mean services that are unique, unusual, or out of the ordinary. Whether services may be considered "special" depends on factors including the qualifications of the person furnishing the services, and whether such services are available from public sources. Staff services such as preparing regular reports, plans, and budgets would be considered neither unique nor out of the ordinary, and would therefore not fall within the hiring authority of section 53060. So we do not see how section 53060 could supply the Agency with authority to contract for staff other than with the County or United.

Given the express language of Water Code Appendix section 121-408 addressing staffing, we conclude that the Fox Canyon Groundwater Management Agency may contract only with the County of Ventura and the United Water Conservation District for staffing services.