Hopes for 4th Utah House seat may be dead

Fights over gun control in Washington, D.C., may have killed for the year a bill that would give Utah a fourth U.S. House seat and give the district a House seat with full voting rights.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., delivered that message in his weekly briefing for reporters on Tuesday, saying a split among District of Columbia leaders about whether to proceed has stalled the bill.

"There is not a consensus among District of Columbia leadership. As a result we will not be able to move a bill at this point in time. We are working toward that goal," Hoyer said.

The problem comes because the Senate added an amendment when it passed the bill in February that would repeal many of the district's strict gun control laws, including erasing its ban on semiautomatic weapons and dropping its criminal penalties for possessing unregistered firearms.

House leaders initially thought they could pass a version of the bill without that amendment, and possibly remove it in a House-Senate conference. However, allies of the National Rifle Association made clear they likely have enough support to add a similar amendment in the House — and likely keep it in the final bill.

So district officials are split about whether they want a full-voting-rights House seat at the cost of possibly losing their gun control laws, or keeping the gun control laws and losing a shot at full House voting rights. The district now has a nonvoting delegate to the House.

Hoyer said he wants "consensus, not unanimity" among the district's leaders about how to proceed. Earlier this year he had predicted quick action after the Senate passed the bill, later said he hoped it would pass by Memorial Day, and now says it may not come up this year.

Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, this state's only Democratic member of Congress, said Tuesday that the current stalemate "has nothing to do with Utah getting a fourth seat, nothing." It's unfortunate that district politics has gotten in the way, he added.

"I'm fine, myself, with the gun amendment sent over by the Senate," said Matheson. "Utah deserves that fourth seat. We should have gotten it after the last Census — it is a question of fairness, and we were treated unfairly" in that count, mainly because the Census Bureau refused to count missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints overseas as Utah residents, while it did count overseas military personnel as residents for their home states' population.

The current four-seat plan, adopted earlier by the Utah Legislature, would consolidate Matheson's 2nd District into Salt Lake City, east-side Salt Lake County, and Summit County — making it much more Democratic in nature.