Utah lawmakers come up with new political map

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Posted: 11:54 AM- After a week of mixing urban and rural Utah neighborhoods in four proposed congressional seats, legislators on a State Redistricting Committee today scratched those plans and created a purely urban district.

The map, which will be debated in a special session Monday and is expected to be forwarded on to Congress the same day, links northern Salt Lake County with the Snyderville Basin and Park City in a new 2nd Congressional District. The remaining three districts will mix urban parts of the Wasatch Front with more rural communities to the north, east and south.

Utah's new seat is linked to a voting seat in Congress for residents of the District of Columbia.

Lawmakers said they were responding to the comments of people who spoke at six public hearings across the state over the past two days.

The new 2nd District would be urban, Democratic, and dominated by northern and eastern Salt Lake County voters, who make up 94 percent of the district's population. Just over 2 percent of the district's voters would live in Davis County. and 4 percent of the district would live in Summit County.

About 40 percent of Salt Lake County's population, in the southern and southwestern portions, would be placed in a new 4th District. The rest of the district would be made up of western Utah counties, from Tooele all the way south to Washington County.

"We've had a significant amount of public input," said Sen. Curt Bramble, R-Provo, committee co-chairman. "There's been a great deal of discussion about the public perception that this is a majority party whitewash. That we are simply trying to gerrymander Republican Party seats. Nothing could be further from the case."

Maps of the proposed new congressional districts can be viewed at http://www.le.state.ut.us/asp/interim/Commit.asp?Year=2006&Com=SPERDT" target"=_blank">http://www.le.state.ut.us/asp/interim/Commit.asp?Year=2006&Com=SPERDT in Plan L.