From Deseret News archives:
Legislators decide county has no say in split
A coalition of west-side cities and private individuals plans on filing a lawsuit to demand a right to vote on the Jordan split, Riverton Mayor Bill Applegarth said.
"We have a moral obligation to take this to the courts," Applegarth said. "After this day's activities, seeing things go back and forth and all of that, I honestly feel that when you are taking away the right to vote, you are threatening freedom. And you have to defend freedom in the courts like you would on the battlefield."
Applegarth said the Riverton City Council is scheduled to vote Tuesday on whether to join a lawsuit demanding a right to vote on the issue.
Lawmakers on Wednesday postponed resolving questions about equalizing school-construction funds, which also had been a concern for west-siders. The west-side residents are worried that a split would diminish their available funding for building new schools.
HB1002, sponsored by Rep. Karen Morgan, D-Cottonwood Heights, allows a public vote on a school district split if municipalities or counties representing 80 percent of the proposed new district give the green light.
The bill passed the House. The Senate offered a substitute bill to also give all voters in the school district, not just those in the area that wants to secede, a say in a school district split. But recognizing the House earlier had rejected such an amendment, the Senate pulled the language and then passed the original House bill, with the 80 percent requirement.
That requirement has been fulfilled in the effort to create a new eastern district separate from Jordan School District, the state's largest, with some 80,000 students. There, all east-side municipalities have decided to put the question to voters, but Salt Lake County on Tuesday turned down the idea, angering some legislators.
The county represents just 4 percent of the people who would be in the proposed new district, Morgan said. A body representing such a small group should not be able to hijack the election, she said.
The legislation does not impact a possible split of Granite School District, because the county represents more than half of the proposed new district.
County leaders on Wednesday called the bill a "reasonable compromise" and weren't upset that the Legislature stole the county's trump card on the Jordan split issue.
