Utah's 104 part-time legislators will get some kind of paid help to deal with constituent needs, leaders said Friday.

But exactly how that help will come is yet to be decided, with House and Senate members, Democrats and Republicans, holding some different ideas.

For example, Rep. Roz McGee, D-Salt Lake, said her Democratic House colleagues are concerned that any constituent staffers be nonpartisan. But Janeen Halverson, the sole staffer for the Democrats in the Senate, said Senate Minority Leader Mike Dmitrich, D-Price, wants to keep Senate Democrats' constituent services partisan, with Halverson handling most of that work in the future as she does now.

Members of the Legislative Process Committee, which has been studying what kind of help legislators should get for several months, said it has basically decided that legislators will get some kind of out-of-session aid. Currently, lawmakers have interns — usually college political science majors — during each 45-day general session to answer their mail, e-mails and telephone messages from constituents. But those interns are gone for the rest of the year.

Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, addressed the committee saying he and a number of other senators and representatives don't really want some kind of pool constituent staff working out of Capitol Hill offices. Instead, he said, they want a part-time person who knows their individual districts, needs and constituents working in their districts.

Stephenson said he'd prefer to be able to join with House members who represent the same areas as he does and hire a person themselves. For example, Stephenson said there are four House members who represent parts of his Senate District 11 in southern Salt Lake and northern Utah counties. If all five split a person's time, he could get around five hours a week or so to help him out.

But Stephenson's idea didn't resonate with committee members, who said they have spoken at length with their respective leaders in each body and basically agree on a plan: have a core group of three staffers in each house, one nonpartisan, one working with Democrats, one with Republicans.

That group could help individual or groups of legislators with constituent services.

Ric Cantrell, Senate deputy, even drew up a proposal showing how the staffers would work, complete with preliminary guidelines on what the staffers would not do for legislators.