The latest stop by the legislature's traveling minstrel show underlines why Utah County should be the core of a congressional district, and why natural local connections should form the basis of state legislative districts.
New districts are needed because Utah has grown in population and now qualifies for a fourth seat in Congress. State districts will be reworked as well.
At Centennial Middle School in Provo the panel got an earful from mayors from South Utah County who object to a proposal that would split Spanish Fork, Springville, Salem and Mapleton between three state Senate districts.
Also, Republican County Chairman David Acheson said that the county should be given five full Senate seats and 14 House seats in the Utah Legislature.
A group called Utah Citizens' Counsel has been arguing for what it sees as fairness and impartiality in the redistricting process. We don't buy all their arguments, but they have come up with some useful principles for debate. Especially relevant is the principle that any redistricting plan should keep municipalities intact, should respect city and county boundaries as much as possible, should keep districts contiguous and reasonably compact, and should identify communities of common interest.
Any plan hewing to those benchmarks would certainly see Utah County as a natural district for national offices. It is hard to imagine an area with so many common demographic and economic interests collected in the same clear-cut geographic area.
As for the state seats, almost all Utah County cities have more in common with one another than they do with the more rural areas of the state. Even the geometry works: no squiggly lines needed on a map.
To fill out the number of residents needed for a congressional district, some rural areas would have to be included with Utah County. That's an easy call: Juab and Wasatch counties are closely linked to Utah County in many ways and would also naturally fit into a district that wouldn't look odd on a map.
Conversely, slicing and dicing Utah County into different districts would violate some of these principles for drawing legislative boundaries, with no sound justification.
One proposal has been dubbed "the pizza slice." It would cut the state into four wedges, with the points in Salt Lake County. The rationale is that this would ensure that each district includes rural areas, so all four members of Congress would have to listen to the needs of farmers, ranchers and miners.
That's not terribly convincing. The rural areas have such an impact on the state that all our lawmakers already must pay attention to those areas. And almost any Utah district that includes urban areas could easily include some nearby rural counties without resorting to pizza.
The charge has been floated that the pizza slice is a gambit to divide the Democrat vote in Salt Lake County and possibly deny Rep. Jim Matheson his seat. While we're not among those who think a perfectly impartial world can be achieved, it would be unwise to implement a plan so easily assailed as a gerrymander.
The legislature needs to strive to avoid that appearance. The lines that were drawn after the 2000 Census are still mentioned -- fairly or not -- as an egregious bit of political manipulation. Utah will continue to be dominated by conservatives, and by Republicans, no matter how the lines are drawn. So the GOP-dominated legislature can afford to be magnanimous.
In Utah County, there's no need for great exertions. It is arguably the most conservative and homogeneous county in America, and that makes it a natural anchor for a new congressional district. Making it so would get the whole process off to about as good a start as could be expected.
Other pieces would fall into place fairly easily.
