OCR Text |
Show Hew Dill Improves Local Situation The legislative reapportionment bill approved at the recently re-cently adjourned legislature did not give the outlying counties of the state the representation that had been hoped for, but the solution was generally acceptable and provided a much improved political representation set-up for Iron and Washington counties. In the new bill each of these two counties retained its one representative to the Ihouse of representatives, and in addition provided that each shall have a senator instead of one senator for the Iwo counties as in the past. With Washington and Iron counties- comprising one senatorial sen-atorial district, with one senator elected every four years, imany perplexing problems of proper representation have arisen at election time. In spite of this the two counties Jhave usually solved the problems on a friendly and broad-mfrnded broad-mfrnded basis, which has been rather remarkable under Mae circumstances. Under the new plan the problem of "alternating" the senate seat between the two counties will be eliminated, and voters in each of the two counties can select their senators sen-ators without consideration of representation between the two counties. Under the "gentlemen's agreement" in effect most of the time it has been difficult to maintain the plan of "alternating" the representation because of political competition between Democrats and Republicans. This has made it impossible to maintain the schedule of alternating because of the necessity of one party meeting the political strength of the other. The new plan, in addition to giving the people of Washington Wash-ington and Iron counties greater representation in the state legislature, will eliminate a perplexing problem, and most certainly will lead to greater political harmony between be-tween the two counties. |