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SALT LAKE CITY — House leaders voted unanimously Tuesday to declare Craig Frank doesn't live in the Utah County district he has represented since 2003.
The House Management Committee's action, however, far from ends Frank's fight to keep the District 57 seat he won again in November.
Instead, it will be up to the full House to determine Frank's fate when they approve a roster of members at the start of the 2011 Legislature on Monday.
After the more than two-hour hearing Tuesday, Frank said at the urging of his constituents, he's not ruling out going to court to keep his seat.
"They want me to fight this," Frank said, especially some 2,500 of his Cedar Hills neighbors who, like him, have just found out they live outside District 57 because of a decade-old discrepancy between state and county election maps.
Voters in the area have been getting the wrong ballots for House, Senate and congressional races ever since a portion of Cedar Hills annexed at the time of the 2000 Census was included as part of the district by the county but not the state.
Frank, who moved into the area from Pleasant Grove two years ago, said he discovered the problem a little over a week ago when he entered his address in a new House website and another legislator's face popped up on his computer screen.
While there was some discussion Tuesday about solving the dilemma by quickly redrawing the district boundaries to include the disputed area, Frank said that's not likely to happen. Such action would require a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate.
(1) A person is not eligible to the office of senator or representative unless the person is:
(e) (i) a resident of the district from which the person is elected for six consecutive months immediately prior to the last date provided by statute for filing for the office;
"There's a lot of potential political fallout from that and I think that's one of the concerns of my colleagues here," Frank said. "That would require at this point, everybody to dismiss the cronyism argument."
Frank, a Republican, is a political ally of new House Speaker Becky Lockart, R-Provo, and neither the House nor the Senate GOP caucuses have been willing to push the issue.
That's because lawmakers are set to begin a new redistricting process later this year based on the results of the 2010 census, and no one wants to be accused of adjusting a district to help a colleague.
Lockhart said she expects Frank's situation to come up again in the House caucus Wednesday now that the committee has clarified he does not live in his district.
"It helped clarify we have an issue here," Lockhart said. "I am concerned there are a couple of thousand people there who through no fault of their own, and through no fault of the Legislature, have been voting in elections, I guess you could say, erroneously."
Several residents affected by the boundary issue complained they have been disenfranchised as voters, casting ballots for candidates who don't actually represent them.
Karen Herd, a chairwoman of one of the Cedar Hills precincts affected, became tearful as she asked the committee to consider that her husband is a member of the military about to be deployed.
"If he is not going over to Afghanistan to defend my right to vote, I do not know what he is going there for," Herd said. "I would ask you to stop and consider what you are doing when you take away my right to vote."
The Utah County Republican Party, which normally would hold an election among district delegates as quickly as possible to fill the vacancy, has postponed any action until Jan. 29 in the hopes the issue will be sorted out by then.
A week ago, Frank appeared to be giving up his seat at a press conference called by House leadership to announce a District 57 vacancy based on legislative counsel's interpretation of the residency requirement.
Since then, Frank has said the issue is more complicated.
Legislative counsel told the committee Tuesday that it's clear Frank does not live in his district, and, under the state Constitution, can no longer serve as its representative.
Frank testified he was not prepared to make legal arguments, but pointed out his election was certified by the lieutenant governor and links on the state website show him as a candidate in the affected area.
E-mail: lisa@desnews.com.
