OCR Text |
Show By Jack Willis V ) Because of its population growth the state of Utah will have another U.S. Congressman. Also because of growth Uintah County is too large for one and not large enough for two representatives represen-tatives under the 75 seat plan for the State House of Representatives. The Utah Advisory Commission on Reapportionment has presented its report to Governor Scott Matheson on boundary changes because of population growth during the past ten years. The Legislative Reapportionment Reap-portionment -Committee is still debating proposals of its own on dividing up the districts. Governor Matheson has called a special session of the Legislature for Oct. 28 to deal with the reapportionment issue. In the State House of Representatives reapportionment, the Advisory Commission proposed cutting off the Ballard area of Uintah County and giving it to Duchesne County along with a part of Wasatch County, and to leave Daggett County with Uintah. In the 7b seat plan each district needs only about 19,000 population for a seat. With the 1980 U.S. census as the guideline Uintah County with 20,479 is too large to be just one district. The suggested alternative is to cut an area out and give it to another county, or go to the proposed 69 seat House plan which increases the district population to23,000 and cuts out six members of the House. Uintah and Daggett Counties could probably qualify as a district under the 69 seat plan as a five percent deviation is allowed in the state house and senate divisions. However, the six members of the House of Representatives who would be cut out under the 69 seat plan are incumbents and would probably not vote to lose their seats. We do not like the idea of the westside of the Uintah County going to Duchesne County for their House district. Leaders from the westside have expressed ex-pressed that they do not want to be adopted by another county, but prefer to stay with their own county. We hope something can be worked out to keep the westside in the Uintah district. In the Senate reapportionment Advisory Ad-visory Committee plan, about 50.000 population is needed in each district. The proposal for District 26 would include in-clude Uintah, Daggett, Duchesne, Wasatch and part of Summit counties. There seems to be no problem there. In the U.S. Congressional districts about 485.000 make an even three way division for the state. The proposed plan is to make a backwards seven configuration for the first district starting at the very bottom with San Juan County coming up to the top of the state including the Uintah Basin counties and taking the top counties over to Box Elder County. The second district would be made up of the northern nor-thern part of Salt Lake County and District three would comprise all of the western counties from Tooele to Washington as far east as Wayne. Some opposition to this division has been made by Southern counties, who would rather have a north-south instead in-stead of the east-west division. The Utah Advisory Commission on Reapportionment was set up to be nonpartisan. non-partisan. The Legislative Reapportionment Reap-portionment is Republican dominated. However, with a Democratic governor a debate is in store on the reapportionment reap-portionment issues. Uintah County in a few years, with its population growth forecast, will probably be misrepresented. The proposed Congressional and Senate plan will not make much difference, but the House plan in District 67 with 75 seats will cause a separation of interests in-terests within the county. We would hope that the 69 seat plan can be used which will keep Uintah County intact. But this move would be like cutting the federal budget, it's not easy to wipe out six political jobs. We expect a political battle to take place at the special session on Oct. 28 and that the final decision will have to be made by a court of law. This weekend marks the end of Daylight Saving time for this year. Before you go to bed Saturday turn all the clocks back one hour so that when you wake up on Sunday morning you will be on the right time. |