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Show Under The Capitol Dome I rBy :Harry Marlowe From now -on, -a' little more constructive con-structive action can logically be expected from the Utah Legislature. Legisla-ture. All of trie wild clutter of bills that jammed the House and Senate Sen-ate calendars have been. tossed into in-to the sifting committee. And, despite the -fact that the lobbyists -will be pouring on the pressure for "special interest" bills, indications are that the screening committees -are more interested in-terested in getting across good legislation than they are in setting up any records for passing bills. Actually, there are two big issues is-sues overshadowing all the -rest-re-apportionment and appropriations. appropria-tions. By the end of the week, the answers will be in on appropriations. appropria-tions. The"big money biU is due Friday. Advance indications are that this bill will be as close as possible possi-ble to the $69.2 million budget submitted by Gov. J. Bracken Lee. However, the Legislature has shown a tendency to be willing to spend a little more money than the governor, particularly in the matter of continuing aid to needy school districts for building. 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 bur-den all onto property to the tune of some $12 million. J All of the tax increase or tax revision re-vision bills, which could bring in some $5 to $7 million, are mark- ing 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 pro-perty a lot. There is no doubt that property taxes will go up, because the state will almost inevitably have to levy a state-wide tax to make up the school fund deficit. The re-apportionment picture is not nearly as clear. The snarl is in the House and, more specifically", specifical-ly", in small factions within both the Republican and Democratic parties. Party leadership in the Democrats Demo-crats is holding out against reapportionment, re-apportionment, but growing interest inter-est among Democratic members indicates this block will not stand up. The only question is In what direction will the Democrats go when they decide to act? Republican leadership is determined deter-mined to get some sort of plan across. 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 can- - not he used to ram through some sort of action. , The plan which appears to be catching on is to leave the Senate at the 25-member figure worked out by the senators early in the j session, then set the House up ! with a membership- of 61. The way this would be done is to add one member to Salt Lake, Weber, Utah -and Davis 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 on any' sort of plan at all. And this will constitute a major issue the rest of the way during the session. |