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Show By Harry Marlowe A reshuffling of the seats in the Utah Legislature, with a possible pos-sible reduction of membership in both houses, might yet come out of the session now one-third over on Capitol Hill. If the legislative reapportionment reapportion-ment should come, however, it appears likely it will be tied to the constitution,- regardless of the proposal accepted. Debate on the issue moved into prominence near the end of the third week of the 60-day session ses-sion and is still high on the order of business at this point. It all started in the Senate with the arrival at a spot on the calendar1 cal-endar1 where rested a bill introduced intro-duced by Sen. Rendell N. Ma-bey Ma-bey (R. of Bountiful.) This measure, the only one acceptable to a majority of the Utah Legislative Council, would cut the size of the House from 60 to 53 and the Senate from 23 to 21. Davis county would pick up a representative, but Salt Lake county would lose four, and Box Elder, Sanpete, Carbon and Cache would lose one each. In the Senate section of the measure, a re-distribution of southern and . eastern areas would provide for the reduction of membership. Also, Salt Lake Weber and Utah counties would be districted to provide that residents of those counties would be voting for only one senator, as in the remainder of the state. Now Salt Lake county citizens vote for seven and those in Utah and Weber vote for two. Chief opponent to this measure mea-sure is Sen. Alo'nzo F. Hopkin (D. Woodruff) who is holding Lee ' 2 115 Johnson 3 0 0 6 Siddoway 6 6 3 15 Freestone 10 5 2 23 Hullinger 0 111 Hacking 5 7 3 13 Hatch 2 0 0 4 Burns 2 0 0 4 Markley 2 ,0 0 4 Collins 2 5 2 6 TOTALS 34 25 13 81 Altamont 9 28 41 57 Uintah 17 42 56 81 Union B's Also Win The Kittens from Union kept their undefeated record still clean in league play as they outclassed the Duchesne B team 46-20 in a preliminary game. Eleven B players from Union entered the game and 10 added to the score. Charles Denver and Kenneth Anderton were high with 8 each. Lance with 11 led the Eagle youngsters and was also high point man for the night. Box score - B teams: UNION "B" G T F P Anderton 3 5 2 8 Hanson 2 0 0 4 Denver 3 7 2 8 Broderick 2 '2 0 4 Rasmussen- 2 0 0 4 T, Robb 0 1 0 0 Domgaard 1113 Neilson 2 115 Herbert 2 3 15 R. Robb 0 3 2 2 Adams 1 3 1 3 ' TOTALS 18 26 10 46 DUCHESNE "B" G T F P Lance 4 7 3 11 Esauk 0 4 11 Sprouse 0 4 0 0 Lewis 0 7 3 3 Bates 0 2 0 0 Robb 0 0 0 0 Pearson 0 0 0 0 Brown 0 0 0 0 Bancroft 0 0, 0 0 Moon 14 3 5 TOTALS 5 28 10 20 Duchesne 1 9 16 20 UNION 13 21 33 46 out for a constitutional amendment amend-ment to provide for one senator from each county. As a compromise it has been suggested by some that the Ma-bey Ma-bey bill might be acceptable to small counties, providing it is placed in the constitution by constitutional amendment in order or-der to hold out further changes by statute that could upset the balance in full favor of population popula-tion over areas in both houses. The reapportionment issue, along with gas tax refunds, income in-come tax reduction and appropriations appro-priations have come on as top issues in the session so far. Gov. J. Bracken Lee put stress on appropriations ap-propriations with his budget message that proposes cuts principally prin-cipally in the budgets of the University of Utah and Utah State Agriculture College and state spending of $500,000 for 1953-55 than in the nearly ended end-ed 1951-53 biennium. Cities and counties have pushed through the House so far a provision to put all motor vehicle ve-hicle registration funds into the B and C road fund, which is exclusively for their use. At present pre-sent they get $2,000,000 and the rest is split with the State Road Commission. The Senate also' killed efforts of Sen. Edward H. Watson (D Salt Lake) to rescind a 1951 vote urging the limintation of federal income taxes to 25 per cent of income and to urge the congress to retain federal control con-trol of off-shore oil lands. Sen. B. H. Stringham (R. Vernal) was the lone Republican to vote in favor of the latter. The battle for off-highway gas tax refund promises to be a bitter bit-ter one. There was no difficulty in getting through the House a bill to give refunds on special fuels for off-highway use. But in the lower house, a pair of powerful rural-urban coalitions coali-tions battled each other to a standstill on the question of gas tax rebate. As the week ended, the matter mat-ter was still up in the air and no one seemed quite sure just what would happen. The lower house margin shifts will determine deter-mine how much, if any, gasoline taxes will be raised. The farm bloc (so called even though it is composed of many urban representatives) has promised prom-ised there will be no gas tax raise unless a refund measure is passed. And they appear to have very nearly enough power to make their threat good. |