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Show Under The Capitol Dome By Harry Marlowe Since 1931, as has been said many times before, legislative reapportionment re-apportionment has been an issue in Utah. Since 1941, it has been a real issue. The 1955 sessions looks like it could be the. session to change all that. The Senate already has hammered hammer-ed out the compromise it wants. They have sent their measure along to the House for that body to settle its own problems. And, if the Senate can convince the House to keep hands off the Senate Sen-ate formula which has been worked work-ed out,' there is a chance that the state' might get some action. There is some agitation in the House to revamp the Senate plan. There is also considerable agitation agita-tion to. leave it alone. If reapportionment reappor-tionment runs on the rocks in this session, it will be the House which does the steering. The Senate plan is one to give permanent Senate control to the rural areas by specifying that no five counties, nq matter hqw populous pop-ulous they might become, could have more than 48 per cent of the Senate seats and no one county could have more than 24 per cent. It also asks for better balance by seeking the districting of Salt Lake County into six districts, Weber into two . and Utah into two.' . Iron, Washington and Sevier counties benefit most by the present' pres-ent' plan. , They would all get one senator each. They are now in senatorial " districts with other counties. The rest of the . overall effect of the Senate proposal would not be too great. It would raise membership mem-bership in the Senate to 25. It would provide that the rural counties coun-ties all outside of Salt Lake, Weber, Utah and Davis, would have a three seat margin of control, con-trol, Biggest weakness with the plan the Senate passed is that they allowed al-lowed for a House of 70 members. Of course, the senators merely picked a population figure and left the final form up to the House. The trouble with such an idea is that the House might take such a figure serio,uly and there are a good many people who are firmly firm-ly convinced the House could get along with less, not more, members. mem-bers. ''..'' , Under the 70-member provision, Salt Lake would go from 19 to 24 members, Davis from 1 to 3, Weber and Utah from 5 to 7. The others would stay as1 is, except ex-cept Sanpete, which would lose one seat. The whole question of reapportionment reappor-tionment revolves about one thing. The . Senate, wants to write the theory of rural Senate control into the Constitution,' Many of, the Salt Lake County and Weber County people,; want both houses apportioned appor-tioned on a." strict population formula. for-mula. , , . ''' - . ' . The whole matter of reappor-. tionment rests upon whether .the representatives of the populous counties would rather have their own .interests better served than those of the rest "of the .state, ,. |