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Show MmJf. By Harry Marlowe Utah's Thirtieth Legislature passed the half-way mark in its 60-day session Tuesday, but was far from being half-way through the business before it. In fact, just about everything that presents any kind of an issue has either been delayed or has not reached the floor of either body as yet. Exceptions are the income tax reduction and gas tax refund matters. The .reduced income tax is all set up, including an extension of the filing date to April 15. The new short form is the main bill, it provides, a straight across exemption of $600 per individual and a deduction deduc-tion of ten per cent or a listing of federal income tax deductions against gross income. In addition addi-tion tae federal income tax paid can be deducted. - As to the gas tax refund for oli-nighway use gas, it was kill-ea kill-ea this session in the House. Lieath came after a long con-uoversy con-uoversy in which some members mem-bers tried to attack the issue to a proposed hike of one-cent in, me tax on gasoline. ' The gas tax increase went through the House all right, but several Republicans voted against it after hearing Gov. J. Bracken Lee intends to veto the measure if and when it reaches him. The Senate has yet to work on the matter. The Senate, in fact, has yet to work on many matters. It has spent most of its time on reapportionment.' reap-portionment.' That issue is still red-hot, and there are many who insist that anything that passes one house will fail to' pass the other and that the present make up of 60 representatives and 23 senators will remain after the session is over in March. Should that be so, according to Sen. Randell N. Mabey (R-Davis), (R-Davis), the people (likely spearheaded spear-headed by those in his county) will reapportion by referendum. He says the 40,000 residents of his county are getting no' more representation with a single senator sen-ator and single representative than districts of far less than a tenth that many citizens. In the hope they might get some sort of workable plan for dividing up the representation in the two houses, the Senate finally did agree on a basic policy pol-icy to follow setting up membership mem-bership in one house on the basis ba-sis of population and the other based on area. Under this plan, advocated by Sen. Orval Hafen (R-St. George), the rural areas would get preference pre-ference in the Senate and the urban region in the House. Sen. Mabey has a somewhat different plan, but the end result re-sult will be the same. And there is always the. plan to set up one Senator for each county, patterned after the U. S. Congress. Con-gress. But, with the session half gone, the big issues still remain. The House has passed the controversial con-troversial Sunday closing law, which would allow sale of tobacco to-bacco but not bread, soft drinks but no beer, milk but no groceries. gro-ceries. After a stormy public hearing, the Senate has the bill in committee and its future, as the time runs out, is rather uncertain. un-certain. Yet to' come up are varied plans of promoting state tourist trade, the entire round of requested re-quested salary increases, the proposed pro-posed new public health code, the proposed fish and . game code, flood control, a raft of traffic safety proposals' and provisions pro-visions for enabling municipalities municipal-ities to set up programs for clearing up stream pollution and building sewage disposal and treatment plants. As the legislators round the turn into the backstretch, most of them are casting apprehensive apprehen-sive glances toward the big public pub-lic school survey commission, just now finishing up its report, and the powerful joint appropriation appro-priation committee, which must figure out where the money is to come fr6m and how much will be spent for what. No one, especially the legislators, legisla-tors, know how big a need there will be for public school facilities. facili-ties. Sources close to the 60-man commission say the demands will be far more moderate than most have predicted. But even the most moderate prediction yet heard by the legislators has been in the neighborhood of $5',-000,000.00. $5',-000,000.00. If such a demand materializes, legislators will be faced with a choice of either giving th? school no additional relief or cutting down all along the line in other fields. No matter what happens, two facts have emerged from the first 30 days. One, Gov. Lee has been given his tax cut.. And two', the most interesting and perplexing part of the 1953 session still lies before be-fore the legislators. |