Legislature Signs on to Redistricting Effort
None by KCPW
(KCPW News) The Utah Legislature is planning a two-week blitz to approve new Congressional district boundaries and add a fourth seat. Yesterday, Republicans in the Utah House and Senate voted to include a series of public hearings in the effort."One of the objections the Senate had early on was there was no room for public input," says Senate President John Valentine. "That was wrong."
Under a compressed time frame, a committee of lawmakers will begin drafting maps this week and will hold hearings across the state the week after Thanksgiving. Governor Jon Huntsman Junior intends to call a special session to approve the maps before December 4th when Congress plans to convene in a lame-duck session. Rather than adopt the map Huntsman has proposed, Senate Republicans want to return to one drafted during the last redistricting effort in 2001.
House Speaker Greg Curtis says his colleagues will support a map that guarantees one of the four Utah seats for the Democrats and likely includes Salt Lake City.
Email to a friendPosted in KCPW Newsroom and Legislative Coverage. Copyright 2008 KCPW
1. T-Flip said:
Utah will get its fourth seat in the 2010 census anyway. All of the wrangling and maneuvering and district-drawing just so Utah gets its fourth seat a couple of years earlier is simply a smokescreen for the real issue at hand: whether the Federal District of Washington D. C. get its own Congressperson.
Another smokescreen is the notion of "partisan balance" built into the proposal by allowing Utah a seat while creating the DC seat. Any partisan balance evaporates after 2010 and the net effect is simply the creation of a safe Democratic seat.
The issue is Washington D. C. They have a separate status from the 50 states, and a Constitutional amendment to grant senators and representatives to DC has failed in the past. If they want representation like the states, I feel they should turn their land over to Maryland and let them be like anyone else.
The Federal District could be preserved to maintain roads and federal buildings separately, but all residents would be Maryland citizens.
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