Lawmakers are targeting Summit County in a new bill that would alter the demographics of the County Council.
Currently, all county councilors are elected at-large to represent the entirety of Summit County. However, legislation introduced by Rep. Jordan Teuscher of Salt Lake County would force the County Courthouse to implement districts, and at least 65% of councilors would be required to represent a specific district rather than holding an at-large position.
But Deputy County Manager Janna Young said the language of the bill is so convoluted there’s a possibility that all councilors may end up tied to a district. The bill unanimously passed a state House committee on Wednesday morning.
“The way the bill sponsor presented it was that this is an effort to try to give more representation or a louder voice to the more rural parts of the county,” Young said. “Their approval of the bill was kind of a caveat in saying that they wanted to continue to work on language with the bill sponsor, so it’s possible this bill will expand beyond what it is currently, but obviously it’s a huge change for us.”
House Bill 356 only affects Summit and Cache counties, according to Young.
If it’s passed by the state Legislature, Summit County would need to quickly establish a districting commission by June 1. The commission would include the mayors of each municipality in the county and one representative who resides in an unincorporated area. That representative would be appointed by the County Council.
Commissioners would be responsible for dividing the county into districts for a presentation to the County Council by Aug. 1. Within 30 days, the county councilors would need to hold a public hearing and approve the proposal.
“The County Clerk will then have to designate half the districts to have an initial term of two years and actually implement that map for the next county election,” Young explained. “The council members representing districts shall live in the district and be voted in by the residents of each district during the 2026 general election with those terms to start Jan. 1 of 2027. In general, other than that initial term, the council terms will be four years.”
Terms for all current councilors would end on Dec. 31, 2026, to transition to the new structure.
When the county government switched from a commission to the county manager and council structure around 2008, the reigning committee had the chance to implement districting and decided against it, according to Young.
“There just wasn’t enough population to get to, for instance, an eastern Summit County district,” she said. “They would have to be combined with, maybe, Jeremy Ranch or Promontory or Old Ranch Road or what have you, and they didn’t want that. Obviously, our argument is our residents should decide how their government looks locally, and this is what they chose.”
County Council Vice Chair Canice Harte said he doubts the county will have much say in how the bill ultimately looks or if it passes.
“If the intent is really to try to make sure there’s an East Side voice … whatever the number is, the fewer [districts] we have, the more it loads all the votes onto the West Side,” he said. “Really what it does is it puts all the power of the vote over on the West Side, and I think it really hurts the East Side voice.”
Both Harte and Young expressed concerns about dysfunction and in-fighting on the County Council if representatives are pigeonholed into caring about only one district. County Council Chair Tonja Hanson added that her biggest worry is the possibility of having five new councilors with no experience in 2027 once the switch has taken effect.
“I’m concerned because we are the only county that’s actually going to be affected by this districting piece of the bill, and a vast majority of our population lives in the unincorporated part of the county, and yet the commission making the decision about how to district is made up of all of the mayors of the municipalities and one person from the unincorporated part of the county,” said County Clerk Eve Furse. “That seems really unfair to me as someone living in the unincorporated part of the county. I’d like a little more representation than that on the commission.”
Furse said the bill would also increase the size of the election next year because there would be five council seats on the ballot instead of two.
“There’s a reason we divide up the races for county positions between the two years,” she said. “It helps to even out the size of the ballot and keep it in a reasonable place, so there’s that issue for us.”
She added it would be easier for the Clerk’s Office if the boundaries were drawn with existing precincts in mind. Otherwise, her office would need to “re-precinct” the county to accommodate.
H.B. 356 has not passed the state House as of Thursday afternoon, but it is expected to continue making its way through the Legislature over the next few days. The 2025 general session ends on March 7.