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Many Park City residents say they have more in common with Salt Lake City voters 35 miles to the west than their neighbors in Kamas, 10 miles to the east.
In recognition of that reality, legislative members of a state Redistricting Committee relaxed their dedication to mixing rural and urban Utah neighborhoods in four proposed congressional districts enough to create a purely urban district Wednesday.
Lawmakers approved a single map that links northern Salt Lake County with the Snyderville Basin and Park City in a new 2nd Congressional District. The remaining three districts will blend urban parts of the Wasatch Front with more rural communities to the north, east and south.
"We felt this was a good compromise to put more rural folks into three seats to strengthen their voices and then create this urban seat," said Salt Lake City Democratic Rep. Jackie Biskupski.
Legislators have been meeting for two weeks as part of a brisk timeline meant to put the Utah map in front of Congress during a lame-duck session that begins Tuesday. Last week, they crouched over computers to create at least a dozen maps, trying to quell, sometimes unsuccessfully, leftover angst from the 2001 redistricting process.
This week, they logged 1,000 miles on a state plane, taking their maps from St. George to Ogden and points in between to let the public comment. They debated and defended their rural-urban philosophy, refuting skeptics who said the whole process was a partisan sham - including a Park City woman who complained about being in the "hellhole" of the 1st Congressional District.
Finally, on Wednesday, the 11-member panel agreed nearly unanimously on a final map. Lawmakers said they were responding to the comments of people who spoke at six public hearings across the state over the past two days.
"We've had a significant amount of public input," said Sen. Curtis 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."
The new 2nd District, which includes Congressman Jim Matheson's east-Salt Lake City neighborhood, would be urban, Democratic, and dominated by northern and eastern Salt Lake County voters. Salt Lake County voters 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.
After the 2001 redistricting, Matheson contemplated suing the state after Republican lawmakers gerrymandered him into a district stretching from Salt Lake City to St. George. Wednesday, Matheson spokeswoman Alyson Heyrend declined to comment on the new map, calling it "extremely hypothetical." Instead, Matheson has joined the state Democratic Party's push for an independent redistricting commission.
"Nothing good can come out of a process where politicians are picking their voters," Heyrend said.
Cottonwood Heights, Sandy and Draper residents would be included in a redrawn 3rd Congressional District, now held by Congressman Chris Cannon. And residents of southwestern Salt Lake County would be shuttled into a new 4th District, which stretches from Tooele to Washington County.
Rep. Rob Bishop's northern Utah 1st District would lose west Salt Lake City, Tooele, Summit, Morgan and most of Juab counties.
Lawmakers were not able to satisfy all voters who spoke at their hearings. Price residents, for example, all but demanded that lawmakers draw Matheson's district to include Carbon County so they could keep the Democrat as their representative. Instead, Price is lumped in to Cannon's district. And despite concerns raised by several lawmakers, Kearns and Taylorsville remain split under the new map.
Committee members said two of their goals - drawing the district boundaries to give each about 558,000 people and keeping communities together - conflicted with each other.
"They don't work," said Rep. Dave Clark, R-Santa Clara.
"There are going to be tradeoffs here," added Bramble. In Salt Lake County, "no matter where we draw those lines, there will be numerous cities that will have to be divided."
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* Tribune reporter THOMAS BURR contributed to this article.