KGWN –Cheyenne, WY– Scottsbluff, NE News,Weather, SportsRedistricting Moving Through the House

Redistricting Moving Through the House

The legislative redistricting bill came up for its third and final vote Friday in the Wyoming House.

The committee in charge of recommending a redistricting proposal to the legislature has been hard at work on this issue since April 12 of last year.

Friday was another successful day toward adopting the redistricting bill.

The bill had already passed two votes in the House with little change in southeast Wyoming from the form it was introduced.

"There's one minor amendment that takes care of a problem around the town of Torrington. Other than that nothing else has come up. The bill will pass out of the House today and it'll go over to the Senate," said Pete Illoway, R-Cheyenne.

There has been a couple attempts to amend the bill, but both were defeated.

Representative Pete Illoway is co-chair of the committee says he's pleasantly surprised how quickly the bill moved through the house. He doesn't foresee a lot of problems for the bill to get through the senate.

"My understanding and I would think that they would take it to the body probably either Friday or Monday. Watch it, I think it'll move along briskly," Illoway said.

When redrawing the district lines, they tried to pay more attention to keeping areas of commonality together instead of going by county lines.

"This would create continuity, not only in the way the legislative district is done, but continuity in who represents them. You end up with a new district, new legislator perhaps, no understanding of what it is that they're representing for you," said Rep. Bryan Pedersen, R-Cheyenne.

The plan calls for the most change to Campbell and Sublette Counties because of large population growth as well as Carbon County which has lost population.

Laramie County would not see much change under the current proposal.

"Most of Laramie County's actually staying underneath the way the committee has it together and most of my constituents and most who have commented are in favor of that," Pedersen said.

The Senate will introduce the bill into committee on Monday. When the bill is finally passed the new districts will be in effect for this November's election.