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Show Reapportionment plans abound, but Matheson has concerns , By RANDY DANIELS Record Reporter Although the Utah Advisory Commission' Com-mission' on Reapportionment has already presented its report to Governor Scott Matheson and the Legislative Reapportionment Committee Com-mittee is still debating proposals of its own, Senator Ivan Matheson is not so sure that all the proposals are good for southern Utah. Matheson, who represents Iron and surrounding counties in the State Senate, o objects to the committee's proposed reapportionment of the state's congressional districts. With the 1980 census complete, Utah has a total population of 1,461,037 people, allowing Utah to have one more seat in the United States House of Representatives. The "backwards seven" is the pur-posal pur-posal Matheson objects to. This proposal would link all the counties in the western portion of the state to the counties north of Salt Lake County, creating a backwards seven-shaped district. Matheson isn't pleased with this choice because he feels the "people in the southern portion of the state won't be happy with it." "The backwards seven proposal makes it so 75 percent of the people lie north of Salt Lake County. We feel a better division would be to make the congressional division across the top of Juab County including Utah, Carbon and all counties south. "We have more in common with Utah County than the northern ones. That is why we've put a coalition together to pull off our recommendation. It will have to be a by-partisan effort to pull this one off," he continued. Matheson also spoke of other committee com-mittee reapportionment asignments. "Along with the congressional recommendations we have to redistrict the State School Board, the State Senate and the State House of Representatives. The committee makes its studies, and, based on these studies, recommendations recom-mendations will be made to the legislature, which will have the final say and vote." Some recommendations include changing from an eleven-member school board to a nine-member board. Also there is about an even split on the recommendation to change the house from 75 members to only 69, said Matheson. The court set guidelines for the committee to follow for the reapportionment. reap-portionment. Mist important is the population deviat on in the different divisions. There can be a 1 percent deviation for the national congress districts and a 5 percent deviation for the state house and senate divisions. The ideal population for each school board district is 162,337. Populations for other reapportionments are expected to be close to 485,000 for the congressional districts, 50,000 for the state senate see MATHESON on page A3 Matheson continued from page A 1 divisions and 19,000 for each house district. Matheson stated that the "governor's advisory commission is just a recommending group. We have tried to take into account the governor's commissiun, but their purposals are significantly different than the legislative committees." "Most likely, no matter what we do, it will probably go to court for a final decision," concluded Matheson. |