Posted on 04/29/2005 5:24:20 AM PDT by Military family member
House passes daylight-saving time bill Updated 12:23a.m. Friday, April 29
By Mike Smith/Associated Press/Indianapolis
The Indiana House gave final legislative approval Thursday to make all of Indiana join 47 other states in observing daylight-saving time, capping three decades of contentious debate.
Proponents of the clock change, who failed to win passage of the bill earlier in the day, cheered wildly after it passed 51-46 on a second tally taken shortly after 11:30 p.m. EST. It passed the Senate 28-22 on Wednesday and now heads to Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels, who made it a top priority and is sure to sign it.
The law would take effect next April, when all states except most of Arizona and all of Hawaii would again observe the time change.
House Speaker Brian Bosma held the voting board open for several minutes during the second vote until Rep. Troy Woodruff, a freshman Republican from Vincennes, supplied the 51st "yea" needed for passage. Bosma then closed the machine and announced the bill's passage.
"I can tell you that the rest of the nation, the rest of the world, knows that Indiana doesn't get it," Bosma said during debate. "Now is the day to tell the rest of the world that we are willing to step into the 21st century."
Woodruff voted against the bill earlier and initially cast a no vote Thursday night. His district borders Illinois and a pocket of counties in southwestern Indiana that are in the Central time zone and observe daylight time. Many residents in the western parts of Indiana oppose Eastern daylight time, since it would put them an hour ahead of their Central time neighbors all year.
Woodruff said he changed his vote because the issue had become too partisan and he wanted to move on to bigger matters such as the two-year state budget. He suggested that his vote might be politically risky, but said he was prepared to return home and explain his vote to constituents.
"Some things are more important than re-election," he said.
Daniels spokeswoman Jane Jankowski said the governor spoke with top House sponsors by phone after the vote and extended his gratitude to supporters. "It's a great day," Jankowski said.
Efforts to make the time switch have failed more than two dozen times since most of the state's 92 counties opted out of the time change under state and federal legislation passed in the early 1970s. Its path to passage was rough and rocky all session long, but Daniels lobbied hard for the bill because he said it would eliminate confusion and boost commerce. Dozens of businesses and their lobbying groups backed the bill, saying the current system causes mix-ups over airline flights, delivery times and conference calls.
The House voted 49-48 against the bill earlier Thursday. That vote, however, did not kill the legislation because it takes a constitutional majority of 51 votes to pass a bill or defeat one outright. Seventy-seven counties in the Eastern time zone portion of Indiana remain on standard time year round, while five in southeastern Indiana ignore state and federal law and change their clocks. Five counties each in the northwest and southwest pockets of the state are in the Central zone and observe daylight time.
The legislation would require that Daniels and the General Assembly petition the U.S. Department of Transportation, which regulates times zones, to hold hearings to determine if more Indiana counties should be moved to the Central zone.
The request would have to be made within days of Daniels' signing the bill, and he has said the hearing process could begin within months.
Republican Rep. Jerry Torr of Carmel, the bill's primary sponsor in the House, argued for the time change, saying the state hurts itself by not following the same time as most of the country.
"We put up a roadblock that shouldn't be there," Torr said. Adoption of daylight time "is a signal to the rest of the world that we are ready to do business."
dblock that shouldn't be there," Torr said. Adoption of daylight time "is a signal to the rest of the world that we are ready to do business."
The time zone line at one time went down US 31 which splits the state in half. That's the overall problem, because we straddle the division line, half want to go central and half want to go East. In one version of the bill, those counties on boarders could stay with central time if so desired. I don't know if that stayed with this version.
Gov Daniels now wants to get the federal government to reexamine where the time-zone lines are drawn. He believes they need to be readjusted.
One thing that is requird is that there will be federal hearings on whether Indana will be moved to the Central Time Zone (which is where we were until 1969).
So now the question is whether we will be on Eastern or Central Daylight.
Wow! Are you ex-cited??
Which would you prefer, Miss Marple? EST or CST?
I think maybe Eastern because that way I will still have some daylight in the evening during the winter.
Other than that, I don't have a preference. My husband's work doesn't deal with other states, and I have no vested interest in Central.
I gotta tell you, anything that causes that much ire to the writers of The West Wing is a good thing in my book!
boooooo!
How about we apply a little logic to this baloney. The Earth is divided into 24 time zones, If you followed these zones central time would start in the middle of Ohio.
If we don't want to follow the meridians let's just have one time zone for the whole damn country.
How about we apply a little logic to this baloney. The Earth is divided into 24 time zones, If you followed these zones central time would start in the middle of Ohio.
If we don't want to follow the meridians let's just have one time zone for the whole damn country.
Re: Your tagline...
Joe's a little busy right now. Maybe he'll be free by August...
You don't have to agree with me, but you also don't need to be rude. I understand why people near Chicago want to be with Chiacgo. Why can't you understand why some of us want more daylight in the evening hours? We are no longer an agricultural society. Daylight Savings Time is also energy efficient.
This is what we want--and where we are, we won't have to change time zones. I don't care where the western edge of the state is, as long as they don't force us to go with them.
Ahh Hell, let's just simplify things and make the whole world observe Zulu/Grenwich Mean/whatever they call it now, Time.
Maybe someday they'll just have it [DST] year round.
Indiana was actually the forunner in this area but we just recently took a step backwards.
We used to be on Central DST YEAR ROUND and it was great, but now because there are some people that are too damn stupid to figure out what time it is; we have to mess with clocks twice a year.
I alone have at least 12 different clocks I'll have to reset, and that doesn't include the one clock that's more finicky about it; the body clock.
I lived in FLA and played the DST game and it SUCKED!
Hey Mitch, you lost my vote man. There was a hell of a lot more important issues on your plate than messing with clocks!
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