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Whether it be a lingering anger toward Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams or a quest for better government, some Utah lawmakers have discussed splitting the state's most populous county in two.

A number of legislators and municipal officials within the county blamed McAdams and the County Council for Facebook's decision to build a $2.5 billion data center in New Mexico instead of West Jordan. The county mayor and others balked at the nearly $200 million in tax incentives being offered.

State Sen. Wayne Harper, R-Taylorsville, says he has heard talk about dividing the county, but it is not something he is pursuing as he prepares legislation dealing with the county.

Harper said he advised McAdams, a Democrat, about proposed legislation, but the idea is not to be punitive.

Harper plans to repeal last year's legislation, pushed by the mayor, to set aside a portion of large developments for low-income housing and may look at other ways to tweak county government. That's why his name has come up in the county division rumors.

Whether others on Utah's Republican-led Capitol Hill push a Salt Lake County split remains to be seen. After all, the county does lean Democratic at times, which is why it is divided into multiple congressional districts.

Money talks • Johanna Whiteman has serious concerns about the environment, health care and other issues and wants Utahns in Congress to hear those worries and what she believes should be done about them.

But, as is common practice, many House members' websites accept emails only from constituents living within their districts and require a ZIP code to accompany the email. If the ZIP is not within that congressional boundary, the email is automatically rejected.

Whiteman lives in U.S. Rep. Mia Love's district, so her emails to Reps. Rob Bishop, Chris Stewart and Jason Chaffetz were not accepted. Her email did go through on Love's site.

Here's the rub: All four Utah representatives accept the lion's share of their campaign contributions from donors outside the state, let alone their districts. So it's OK for those outside the district to seek influence by sending money, but they can't express their opinions.

Chaffetz, by the way, lived outside his district for a bit after his congressional boundaries were redrawn. So does that mean that he could send money to himself, but could not express an opinion to himself?

Boys will be boys • State Rep. Dan McCay, Riverton, posted on his Facebook page recently a confession of a little prank he did while serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints some 20 years ago.

Part of his mission was in St. Louis, Mo., and, in 1996, on a preparation day (a day off from the normal proselytizing routine), he and some companions went on an excursion to the zoo.

One of the displays had an animatronic Charles Darwin standing in front of a bookshelf talking about evolution. McCay said he sneaked behind the figure and placed a Book of Mormon on the shelf.

Two decades later, he said, "I was watching a news story about the St. Louis Zoo and it showed a quick look at the same Darwin display." The copy of Mormonism's signature scripture was still there.

In the spirit of equal time, perhaps McCay could arrange to have the animatronic sent to Utah for a couple of days so Darwin could educate the Utah Legislature about evolution.

Take a geography lesson • It was another proud day at the federal courthouse in Salt Lake City on Wednesday when 150 immigrants took the oath to become U.S. citizens.

A news release from the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services listed the countries from which the new Americans hailed.

They included diverse places such as Afghanistan and Armenia, Latvia and Lebanon, Venezuela and Vietnam.

Oh, and "Columbia."

No doubt the release meant "Colombia,"the nation in South America. But that spelling has been appearing in such citizenship releases for months. Maybe those new citizens are from "Columbia" — the capital of the former secessionist state of South Carolina — and needed to apply to be accepted back in the union.