Group seeks neutral legislative redistricting plan

April 20, 2009

Bob Bernick Jr.

A group saying it wants a "neutral" legislative redistricting plan drawn up following the 2010 census will run a citizen initiative petition aimed at setting up an "independent" commission.

Lisa Watts Baskin, a former GOP legislative candidate and former legislative attorney, says a group she's working with — Fair Boundaries Coalition — will soon file the paperwork to start collecting 99,000 voter signatures needed to put a proposed commission-creating law before voters next year.

Criticizing the Legislature's redistricting "is great rhetoric, great drum-beating for some," said Utah House Speaker Dave Clark, R-Santa Clara.

But Utahns have been "well served" by legislative redistricting since 1896 statehood, Clark said. And he hopes that this new group "will at least study" all the work that the Legislature itself does in "an open, yet political" process of redistricting.

The Legislature, controlled by Republicans, refused to vote on Democratic-sponsored bills in the 2009 session that would have set up an independent commission.

And just last week GOP Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. formally told his political-reform citizen commission not to study legislative redistricting — saying he agreed with GOP legislative leadership that redistricting is an internal legislative branch function.

Even though Republicans hold huge majorities in the Utah Legislature, rank-and-file Republicans should still want the new commission, said Watts Basking. "Republicans want to be fair, too," she said. "We want to treat every citizen as an equal. And it is basically unfair to redistrict in a manner that helps incumbents."

The Utah Constitution says the Legislature every 10 years, following census updates, will redraw legislative, U.S. House and state school board districts.

Clark, one of the GOP leaders who politely asked Huntsman to butt out of redistricting and legislative ethics matters (and Huntsman told his reform commission to drop those two subjects), says the Legislature will set up a joint, bi-partisan legislative commission that will travel the state seeking public input on how new district boundaries should be drawn.

While that's fine — and has been done before, notes Watts Baskin — past redistricting has shown great favoritism to incumbents to the peril of regular citizens, she believes.

"It makes no sense that the small town of Randolph (Cache County), population 300, is divided down the middle of its Main Street," she said.