4th seat clock ticking: If Congress stalls, Utah bid will have to wait til 2010

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. wants to step quickly through "the open window" of Utah obtaining a fourth U.S. House seat.

But that window of opportunity may close before such action can happen — closed, if not by the Utah Legislature, then by the U.S. Congress, which may not act on giving Utah and Washington, D.C., new U.S. House seats during a weeklong lame-duck session in early December.

If both the U.S. House and Senate don't approve of the plan in the lame-duck session, "then we are out of business," Huntsman told the Deseret Morning News on Tuesday, and Utah will have to wait until after the 2010 Census to get a fourth seat.

That's because with Democrats taking control of both houses of Congress in January, Huntsman is hearing rumors that the new majority will only want to act "on the D.C. component" of the deal — meaning Utah will be left out.

Likewise, if the Legislature either refuses to take up redrawing a four-seat plan in a late-November special session or goes into special session and can't agree on one, then legislators will doom Utah to be underrepresented in the U.S. House for another seven years.

But while Huntsman and some Utah legislators may want to go full steam ahead, Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah — who remains in U.S. Senate leadership until Dec. 31 — warns there is little likelihood that the compromise plan will make it through the lame-duck congressional session.

If Utah must wait until the 2010 Census gives Utah another seat, it will not get a fourth representative actually sitting in Congress until 2013, after elections are held in 2012, Huntsman said.

"That's why I want to fight for this now," he said. "If it doesn't happen in the lame-duck session, we're back to square one."

The governor met with GOP legislative leaders Tuesday to discuss calling a special session of the state Legislature within a few weeks to approve a four-seat U.S. House redistricting plan.

Just minutes before leaders walked across the Capitol grounds to meet with the governor, on the Senate Web site staff posted a new blog about the redistricting process, saying the job couldn't be done "right" without taking time, soliciting public comment and not rushing to any decisions — clearly a poke at Huntsman's hurry-up plans.