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Show Legislative committee starts reapportionment SALT LAKE CITY - The Utah Subcommittee of the Senate and the House of Representatives on Reapportionment Reap-portionment met last week to begin hammering out the details on the reapportionment of "the State's legislative districts. According to veteran Utah State Senator Ivan Matheson, the six senators and ten representatives met to begin work on two closely related items: the reapportionment of the State's legislative districts, for both the House and the Senate; and the dividing of the State into three equal areas for the accomodation of an ad-ditonal ad-ditonal national Representative. The 1980 census brought out the need for both to happen, because of increased in-creased and shifting population in the State. Matheson noted that because of the changes in population in the State that Utah was entitled to one addtional Representative on the federal level and southern Utah was possible entitled to a bit more equitable representation because of its increased growth. The State Constitution says that there shall be no more than 30 Senators and no more than three times that number of Representatives. The state currently has 29 Senators, so there is a possibility that addtional elected officials could come from the subcommittee's recommendations. However, Matheson noted that the major thrust of the work thus far had been in setting guidelines for the shuffling of boundaries between districts. The subcommittee set up seven " guidelines fn its meeting last week. First, east district must have an approximately equal population. Second, each district shall be representated by a single legislative member. There will be no "at large" legislators. Third, the subcommittee will accept the census figures available. Fourth, a distict must be as contiguous con-tiguous as possible. Fifth, the subcommittee will try to maintain the integrity of existing political units as best as possible. Counties and cities will generally not be split between two or more districts. Sixth, when possible, the subcommittee sub-committee will try to keep a community com-munity of interest together, including intergovernmental groups, such as the Five County Association of Governments. Govern-ments. Seventh, the subcommittee will not draw boundaries to help defeat or elect incumbents. In addition to these guidelines, said Matheson, the subcommittee will also try to keep the population of the various districts within 4 percent of each other. Also, in dividing the state into the national legislative districts, the subcommittee will try to draw trie lines so that there is not over l percent variance in the population of three districts. . Matheson noted thatalLVrh "ittfhs definite has been decided, that the third national district would probably include in-clude all of southern Utah and a part of Salt Lake County. He said that the population just wasn't there to provide a district for southern Utah alone, without tapping the large population along the Wasatch Front. He also pointed out that Iron County did not have enough population yet to have a Representive of its own. There must be a population of 19,480 he said, and Iron County population is only 17,349. However, Washington County will gain a House seat of its own, and the Senator and the Representative for the Iron County area will probably have less ground to cover. Matheson said that the recommendations recom-mendations of the subcommittee will be taken to the next session of the entire legislature. He also speculated that Governor Scott M. Matheson would call a special session on June 22 to address the issues the group has been involved in. Before that time, the Senator said that the committee will be meeting several times and that he would hold public hearings in the area concerning the exact divisions. |