This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The more representative a system of government is, the less the majority of the Utah Legislature likes it. Consider two decisions made this week on opposite ends of the Capitol.
In a House committee Tuesday, a proposal to at least reduce the ability of the already powerful in Utah to draw legislative and congressional districts in a way that helps them keep their power was shunted to an interim study. The next day, a similar measure met the same fate in a Senate panel.
Meanwhile, over on the floor of the Senate, a resolution calling for the repeal of the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution won overwhelming (read: Republican) approval. That's the part of the Constitution that allows for members of the U.S. Senate to be elected directly by the people rather than chosen by the legislatures of the several states.
Neither step is the end of anything, at least officially. Ideas do come out of interim committees. And the resolution calling for the constitutional amendment is no more than a recommendation to Congress.
But, as a map to the Utah Legislature's mind set, the two moves betray a towering distrust of anyone who isn't, well, a member of the Utah Legislature.
Utah is a Republican state, and would be under almost any configuration of districts. But the real power of Republicans in the Legislature and their ability to win congressional elections is magnified far beyond even their superior numbers because members of the Legislature draw districts to suit themselves and their fellow Republicans, not to reflect the population of the state as a whole.
Rep. Rebecca Chavez-Houck and Sen. Jani Iwamoto, both Democrats, introduced similar plans for districts to be drawn by independent, bipartisan commissions.
Compared to the rules in some other states, those plans would actually be rather tepid. In each case, the Legislature would retain the final authority rather than having to defer to an independent panel. But even those ideas were pushed off for further study and, likely, eternal political purgatory.
Meanwhile, Senate Republicans easily rammed through a resolution calling for U.S. senators to again be pawns of that same gerrymandered Legislature. That method was abolished in 1913 when so many state legislatures proved to be gridlocked, bought and paid for, or both.
Sen. Al Jackson, R-Highland, says it would be a good idea for legislatures to again choose senators because, under the current system, those senators are beholden to big-money interest groups. The implication of that statement, that state legislatures are not beholden to such groups, is either stunningly ignorant or amazingly disingenuous.
Add the Utah Republican Party's devotion to its ideologue-favoring caucus and convention system, and you get a clear picture of a Legislature, and its dominant party, pushing for still more control by still fewer people.
And they are not even the least bit ashamed of it.