DENVER—Colorado officials are trying to find jobs for 19 state employees who failed background checks after the state attempted to transfer them to the Department of Public Safety, which has more stringent rules than other agencies.
Public Safety spokesman Lance Clem said Wednesday that his department weeds out any employees who may have been involved in illegal behavior with a criminal background check and a polygraph test because of the sensitive security issues handled by his state agency.
According to the Denver Post (), other state agencies can decide whether illegal behavior disqualifies an applicant for a state job.
The affected state workers had been hired by other departments, which were recently folded into Public Safety.
Some employees refused to take a polygraph test and others failed it. Some workers have yet to be checked, Clem said. And 11 resigned or retired before the background checks began.
Clem said questions included drug use, theft and other illegal activities over the past 10 years.
Jennifer Okes, deputy director of the Colorado Department of Personnel and Administration, said most of the workers now have temporary jobs in other areas of state government until permanent positions can be found, but she said she doesn’t know how long each worker sat at home collecting a state paycheck before the temporary jobs became available.
Okes said when the state first discovered that some workers were not eligible to move to another position, human resource directors were alerted in other agencies. Those directors were told that if they had job openings to first look at the backgrounds of those rejected to see whether they could fill the slots.
The salaries for the employees who aren’t eligible to join Public Safety included a manager making $104,000 a year, while most earn $50,000 or less.
Agencies merged into Public Safety include firefighters in the state Forest Service and the Division of Emergency Management, which had been under the state Department of Local Affairs.
———
Information from: The Denver Post,
