Legislature's plate full with 4-seat plan, Enid

Two items this week: the Utah Legislature and Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. hurriedly putting together a four-seat U.S. House district plan to be submitted to the lame-duck session of Congress in December and the return of Enid Green to a major GOP office.

• First, the four-seat plan.

Politically speaking, it only makes sense for Huntsman and GOP legislators to jump on the four-seat opportunity.

If Congress kills the bill that would give Washington, D.C., and Utah each an extra U.S. House seat, then it will be federal lawmakers' fault, not that of anyone here.

Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, may have private concerns about how the GOP Legislature and governor would redraw his 2nd Congressional District, but publicly he's saying he'll support any plan in Congress that gives Utah another seat.

That's smart politics by him, also.

Huntsman says if the lame-duck session — controlled by Republicans in both the U.S. House and Senate — doesn't pass the D.C.-Utah bill, then Utah will be "out of business," because the new Democratic-controlled Congress won't give Utah another seat.

National Democrats will just try to give D.C. a new seat — leaving Utah Republicans out — because that will be a Democratic representative. Under the bill, Utah would get a fourth seat, and in heavily Republican Utah that would almost assuredly be a GOP representative.

Under the bill, the U.S. House wouldn't change its political make-up, the membership going from 435 to 437.

Some GOP Utah House members voted in the closed caucus Wednesday not to pursue the fourth seat. House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy, said they were concerned both about the constitutionality of giving the District of Columbia a vote in the U.S. House and the political ramifications of doing so.

Could Democrats in Congress then come back and demand two U.S. Senate seats from the heavily Democratic district? They worry.

But such concerns are for another day, apparently.

Within three weeks or so, Utah lawmakers will form a redistricting committee, draw up four-seat boundary maps, hold public hearings.

Huntsman will call a special legislative session, maybe Dec. 1, and in a day — boom! — Utah will have a new U.S. House redistricting.