A rare chance for more clout

A bill to give Utah a fourth congressional seat in exchange for granting a seat to the District of Columbia offers a great opportunity for the leaders of this state to show they stand behind fairness. A fourth representative ought to be worth the trouble of turning the job of redistricting over to a bipartisan or non-political committee.

That, after all, is the main stumbling block.

Without this change, the bill, sponsored by Virginia Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, has little chance of passage. Republicans want to see strong bipartisan support for it before bringing it to the floor. Democrats oppose it, for the simple fact that Utah's record of district-drawing is so dismal.

Every 10 years, Republicans in this state sit down and take pains to redraw congressional districts so as to make it impossible for a Democrat to win. Every 10 years, they fail, but they leave the state's congressional districts in a mess, chopping up obvious communities of common interest, such as those within Salt Lake County. For obvious reasons, Democrats worry that Davis' bill might end up adding two Republican seats if GOP districting plans manage to succeed.

Utah isn't the only state in which redistricting is a controversy, but it is one of the few states where the dominant party would have little to lose by turning things over to a neutral committee.

Given four representatives, chances are Utah will elect at least three Republicans, no matter how the lines are drawn. The important thing at this point is to secure support for Davis' bill, which is a rare opportunity to give the state some more clout in the middle of a decade. And to do that, the state should establish a neutral committee immediately. It would be wrong, as some have suggested, to make the fourth representative a statewide at-large position until 2010.

The bill is one of the few intelligent compromises ever offered in the age-old fight over giving the District of Columbia representation. District residents have a strong argument to make about being the only Americans who are taxed by the federal government without any representation. A seat in Congress would at least grant them that without delving into messy arguments about whether they should be granted statehood.

Statehood would make little sense. Washington is steadily losing population. By the latest census estimates, it has dropped 1.5 percent since 2000 to 563,384 people. Dwindling mid-sized cities should not have their own governors and state legislatures, along with all the bureaucratic offices of a state.

But their residents do deserve some representation. And Utah, whose large missionary population doesn't get included in the census, deserves a fourth seat. Lawmakers and the governor shouldn't let this opportunity slip away.