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Show By Harry Marlowe From now on, a little more constructive action can logically be expected from the Utah Legislature. All of the wild clutter of bills that jammed House and Senate calendars cal-endars have been tossed into the sifting committee. And, despite the fact that lobbyists will be pouring on the pressure for "special interest" bills, indications are that the screening committees are more interested in getting across cood leelslation than they are in setting up any records fof passing bills. Actually, there are two big Issues Is-sues overshadowing all the rest reapportionment and appropriations. appropri-ations. , By the end of the week the answers an-swers will be in on appropriations. appropria-tions. The bitf money bill is due Friday. Advance Indications are that this bill will be as close as possible pos-sible to the $G'J.2 million budget submitted by Gov. J. Bracken Lee. However, the legislature has shown a tendency to be willing to spend a little more mony than the governor, particularly in the matter of continuing aid to needy school districts for buildings. So a $72 million budget is not unlikely. And this will mean the lawmakers will have to take some serious looks at the state's tax problems or else toss the burden all onto the property to the tune of some $12 million. All of the lax increase or tax revision bills, which could bring in some $3 to $7 million, are marking time waiting for the money bill. And the legislators are in a mood to raise taxes a little across the board rather than raise property a lot. There Is no doubt thit property taxes will go up, because the state will almost inevitably have to levy a statewide tax to make up the school fund deficit. The reapportionment picture Is not nearly as clear. The snarl is I In the House and, more specifically, specific-ally, in small factions within both the Republican and Democratic Demo-cratic parties. Tarty leadership in the Democrats Demo-crats is holding out against reapportionment, re-apportionment, but growing interest in-terest among Democratic members mem-bers Indicates this block will not stand up. The only question is In what direction will the Democrats Dem-ocrats go when they decide to act? Republican leadership is determined deter-mined to get some sort of plan arross. But a small segment is not at all pleased with the plan sent over by the Senate and so the party majority in the House cannot be used to ram through some sort of action. The plan which appears to be catching on ts to leave the Senate Sen-ate at the 23-member figure worked out by the senators early In the session, then set the House up with a mombe-ship of 61. The way this would be done is to add one member to Salt Lake, Weber, Utah and Davi counties, and take away one from Cache, Sanpete and Box Elder counties. The rub is, how to get the different dif-ferent House factions together an any sort of plan at all. And this will constitute a major is-sue is-sue the rest of the way during the session. |