And, by darn, those legislators will allow nobody - not the residents on the other side of such a district split, and certainly not the Salt Lake County Council - to stand in their way.

That is the implication of the Legislature's punishing vote in special session Wednesday to cut the County Council out of its role in deciding whether a Jordan district split proposal should go on the November ballot.

It went down like this: Last winter's legislation allowing portions of an existing school district to split off required a vote of all the governing bodies of the various cities or unincorporated areas to put the proposal on the ballot. In the Jordan district, several east-side cities and an unincorporated area banded together to form a would-be district, and all the city councils agreed to put the issue before voters.

Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon reasonably urged the County Council to consider the potential tax hit to the district's west side, where new schools are needed to meet the demands of population growth. There was also a question whether the law should allow all residents of the existing district to vote on the split; as it stands, only those in what would become the new district have a say.

The council postponed its vote, hoping for changes in the law to make it more fair to all concerned.

But, instead of fixing the law's faults, the Legislature booted the County Council out of the picture, for no apparent reason but to show the county who's really in charge. With an amendment, lawmakers gave the city councils in Sandy, Cottonwood Heights, Draper, Midvale and Alta the authority to put the issue of a Jordan district split on the ballot. The County Council, representing 20 percent of the proposed new district, has no say.

Further clouding the district-division issue is the question of whether school-construction costs in growing areas should be shared among all districts. To their credit, legislators decided not to attempt to pass a complicated funding-equalization law in the one-day special session.

Nonetheless, the far-reaching impact of dividing Utah's school districts is ignored in the current law. It should be amended to require more study of how students and taxpayers will be affected. Allowing a few residents - the number was cut Wednesday from 65,000 to 50,000 - to form districts for their own self-interest is bad public policy that surely will come back to haunt us.