I have a Google News search set up to look for “Indiana ‘Daylight Saving'”. I was amused by the first two headlines in that section today:
It’s time to solve Indiana’s problem with time
Evansville Courier & Press
It’s past time to stop fretting about DST
South Bend Tribune
The South Bend Tribune entry is a letter to the editor from a citizen who thinks that there are so many other more important things to worry about so “Why can’t the people of South Bend and surrounding areas let it go and put energy into real problems that have a negative effect on our world?” One might have asked the same question of the DST proponents who labored for decades to get rid of year round standard time.
The Evansville Courier Press column by John Gottcent suggests that the question of what time it is in Indiana was “greatly simplified” through last year’s implementation of Daylight Saving Time. He laments the fact that a time conscious driver, going from Evansville to Chicago, would have to change his or her watch at least twice. He also likens the flip-flopping time zone counties to “spoiled children” who first want one thing, and then another. The solution? Everybody on Central Time, just like Mitch Daniels proposed when he was running for Governor.
Everybody on Central Time
That is what I would like to see. I myself would have rather not gone to daylight savings, but if we MUST then we should go with Central. Daylight till 10 PM last summer was just wrong in my book.
Eastern time sunrises after “8 am” in October, December, January and March have made this past winter the most depressing in my life. This coming fall we add early November to DST, with the “latest” sunrises of all.
Whether one wishes to move on or not depends if one has gotten what they want.Since I and and other Central time supporters in SW Indiana got what we wanted Central time for the region we’d like to move on but we must continue to fight.
Location of Governor Daniels and former state Rep Woodruff’s time zone wall is what most of the debate is about not moving clocks twice a year as many newspaper editorial writers would have you believe.If you live in SW Indiana and you work within the Central time zone your mostly okay with things however if you live within this region but commute to the Eastern time zone or live in the Eastern zone and commute to Central your very unhappy with the situation and rightfully so.
No one wants the time zone boundary in their backyard and would rather the burden be placed on someone besides themselves and will come up with all kinds of reasons to support which time zone will least burden them.That’s human nature.The time zone boundary causes huge problems for people and especially families with kids if you have to cross it every day to work or do business.Yes it was always there but remember the time difference used to be only a little over five months a year now it’s year round.
The Evansville Courier calling the commissioners of the five SW counties “spoiled children” is a analogy I have used many times and I live in one of these counties.Most of them have no clue about what their talking about,only a realatively small group of people complained in most of the counties before they decided to repetion.They never read the Joint Petition Ice Miller LLP prepared which was riddled with misleading statements and incorrect facts.Further documentation from Ice Miller LLP was no better.Each Ice Miller LLPdocument was countered by five well written rebuttal petitions prepared by Central time supporters of SW Indiana which were read by the DOT.Central time supporters answered all the follow up questions asked of ICE Miller LLP in the November 14th correspondence from Senior Counsel Kaleta.
The arguments made by the Chamber of Commerce and Ice Miller LLP that the SW counties will suffer on Central time have NO merit.Ice Miller LLP who seems to rely on phone interviews with pro Eastern time supporters and the Chamber of Commerce never bothers to check the accuracy of the information.It’s very easy to catch them in lies.All Information submitted by Central time supporters have links to VERIFIABLE evidence.
A mountain of verifiable evidence has been and continues to be submitted to the DOT which shows commerce is not being hampered or inconvenienced by the region being on Central time.Numerous examples of economic expansion and record profit years for area businesses,as well as the overall good condition of the local economies and low unemployment rates shows everything is fine.There are people inconvenienced but moving the timezone line will not chnge that it will simply shift it to another group of people.
A study of work commuter numbers shows the least inconvenience being suffered if the region remains on Central time.
Back to the shady process in which this repetiton movement came about.It started in Martin county,my county where a new meeting last year where a lot of out of county Eastern time Crane employees came down to complain and the commissioners voted 2-1 to repetion.The flip flop commissioner who changed his vote to Eastern time was quickly voted out last election cycle.Although Martin county voted to repetition they would make no move if Dubois county did not and neither would the other three counties Daviess,Knox,and Pike.So the Eastern time crowd knew their stand had to be made in Dubois county to flip it then the rest would fall.The Dubois county Chamber of Commerce along with influential business leaders targeted commissioner John Burger a big time Central time supporter according to people from Dubois county Mr.burger was harrassed and his kids were threatened at school until he finally voted to repetion for Eastern time.The vote was 2-1.Commissioner Randy Fleck voted no and said he would not sign the Ice Miller LLP Joint Petition without reading it.You see this was all rushed through without the commissioners ever reading the document because they were told the documentation was on a deadline to be in Washington D.C. if you believe that.Last Spring state Senator Lindel Hume while passing through Loogootee stated before any of this took place that the influential powers in Dubois county were really putting the pressure on commissioner Burger to flip his vote to Eastern.Turns out Senator Hume was correct.
If the DOT goes by the standard convenience of commerce questions the five counties will remain in the Central time zone if they are influenced by politics and Governor Daniels they will switch the counties to eastern time.Since the beginning of this proceeding they have done evrything Governor Daniels has asked them to do and if this continues to be the case they may as well do away with the Uniform time Act and let the states set their own time zones!
The funny part of this is only a handful of businesses out of thousands in the five counties are complaining and some of those are global companies which makes a time zone argument laughable.Of course we have the it gets dark too early in Winter crowd which has nothing to do with setting a time zone boundary.
The one company which complains about the time zone that makes me laugh is Kimball International this is a company which showed record profits this year and actuallyexpanded by buying out another company.All of which happened on Central time.
The DOT stated that the five counties are regionally connected to each other and the original Central time zone counties to the South.That along with these counties and each other they were in the same BEA(Bureau of Economic Analysis) 54 called the Evansville/Kentucky commerce region.The counties are in the same education,workforce developement,transportation,and commerce regions as designated by Indiana and that their strong regional ties to each other and remaining in the same time zone better position them to realize advantages in ECONOMIC,CULTURAL,SOCIAL AND CIVIC ACTIVITIES thereby serving the CONVENIENCE OF COMMERCE.Those were the words of the DOT a little over a year ago.I should say that along with their strong regional ties to each other and the original Central time counties to the South which is what the DOT stated.
Doug- Thanks for the links to the articles. Notice the South Bend lady thought it was important enough to write to the editor. I have yet to see a DST supporter refer to it as Eastern Daylight Time. The Tribune also owns a TV station in South Bend which may explain why they want to keep St. Joseph county on the same time as Elkhart county and Michigan.
Gov. Daniels did request DOT to review the entire state as the DST law required. He must have winked and showed he was only kidding because DOT denied the request on the grounds that it was too broad and the normal procedure was county by county. DOT completely ignored the fact that the ICC transferred large portions of Michigan, Indiana, and Kentucky with the same ruling in 1961.
Placing the issue at the stucturally weakest level of government played right into the strength of the Chamber of Commerce. Their members such as Kimball are very influential at the county level. Also most governing bodies given the option of doing nothing or doing something will choose nothing because it is safer and less work. It was very unusual that 18 counties chose to do something.
Chicago is not only closer to Indy than New York it is closer than Detroit which is 300 miles away.
Has anyone really benefited by EDT? Is Indiana’s time any less confusing now? DST confuses more people than algebra so it would be the first time it has ever unconfused anyone. Did you use less energy last year? I didn’t. Did anyone really play more golf than the year before? Did the crime rate in your county go down? In Marion county it went up. I subscribe to a weekly paper from my native Daviess county which returned to central time and the county sheriff reported a 20% decrease in buglaries last year. Also in the Indy area there are reports that 2 girls on their way to school were raped in the pre-dawn darkness. Does anyone really feel safer driving to work in the dark? Last week the Star reported that only Ohio lost more jobs last year than Indiana.
DDST is like snake oil long on promises but short on delivery. It is depressing to think that future generation of Hoosiers will have this albatross around their necks.
Phillip – I am envious. The NCAA final game comes on at 9 in Indy. Enjoy your 8 o’clock start while you can.
There is no end to the problems caused by EDT. I noticed the clock on a VCR was wrong and checked the computer to get the right time. Guess what. It was an hour off too. Then I realized this is the first Sunday in April and the VCR and computer had advanced one hour to daylight savings time just as they had been programmed to do. Nobody had warned us this might happen. You may want to checked any of your clocks that are set to shift to DST automatically. These were the only 2 devices that had a problem.
Jim B.,
I know what you mean about the clocks we have three smart clocks that automatically move up the first Sunday in April and sure enough I forgot about it last night before I went to bed so we were a hour off this morning.I also had DST set to on the DVR’s and of course they were off a hour.I have since turned this function off since it is useless now like the smart clocks because of the new Federal DST rule.That’s ok though think of all the energy were gonna save by extending DST.At least the Federal government says so anyway.
We have already ordered two new Emerson smart clocks with the new DSt built in from QVC.
I must confess that one of the resons I love Central time is because I’m a sports junkie and love my Colts games and Monday Night Football games on earlier and also IU basketball games.It was nice watching the IU Gonzaga game at 9:00pm instead of 10:00pm.I mean it’s nice to have the Monday night football game end at 11:00pm instead of midnight or after.
I always find the pro DST arguments interesting telling us how traffic fatalities will be down along with the crime rate and energy usuage.Yet like you say the crime rate in Indy is up.I say all those assertions are rediculous.Hell the chamber of commerce takes it one step further saying only EDT will save energy,lower the crime rate,and reduce traffic fatalties.
Jim B.: I keep my VCR clock in manual/DST off mode. That way, the VCR clock didn’t automatically jump ahead on April 1st. Back in the days when we weren’t on DST, I kept the VCR on the manual time setting/DST off mode. Otherwise the VCR picks up the time from the first TV station, which is in Dayton, Ohio. In those days (all of two years ago), the VCR would have jumped ahead to DST on its own if the clock had been in auto/DST on mode. My computers are on Windows XP, so they automatically downloaded an update several weeks ago. The update kept the computer clocks from jumping ahead on April 1st. Nevertheless, I agree with you. DST, particularly EDT, is more trouble than it is worth.
Paul – The Courier article pointed out that Indy is much closer to Chicago than New York City. I always thought Ft. Wayne was nearer to Detroit than Chicago. But I checked it out on Microsoft Streets and Trips and found it is almost a tie. Ft Wayne to downtown Detroit is 162 miles via US 24 and to downtown Chicago via US 30 165 miles.
Jim B. Most folks around here go to Detroit up I-69 to I-94. Uh, wait a minute, what am I saying, hardly anybody goes to Detroit. I mean that seriously, the local NPR station promos are always trips to Chicago for the lyric opera or shopping. The local bar association summer trip has almost always been to see the Cubs in Chicago, though I recall last year they switched to the White Sox. I never hear people talking about going Detroit, except my older son who is a “long time” Tigers’ fan.
BTW, what my younger son wants to know is how far it is to Busch Stadium III (and why we haven’t gone to baseball game in St. Louis since 2004). He just will not buy my excuse that the Browns have left town.
From downtown Ft Wayne to Busch II it is 370 miles and it will take 5 hr 51 min.
The Browns! Isn’t that the team that had midgets on it.
Jim B.- Just one midget, Eddie Gaedel. Batted once as a pinch hitter and drew a walk before the commissioner’s office voided his contract.
See his record at
http://www.baseball-reference.com/g/gaedeed01.shtml
As for the Browns, well one Browns player said, the fans would never boo the team since the players outnumbered the fans. Maybe that’s why Browns owner Bill Veeck once allowed the fans to call a game (which the team actually won).
The Browns give an excuse to annoy my Albert Pujols worshiping younger son. I can keep on telling him that the best 1st baseman in St. Louis baseball history was George Sisler.
For the almost two years I’ve been following the TZ discussion, the most agitated pro-Central people are in SW Indiana, and a close second are South Bend-area people. Conveniently, their solution is statewide Central Time. It both moves the TZ line away from them and puts them on the same time as the majority of the state.
However, move the TZ line anywhere else, including the eastern border, and your just inconveniencing new people who will post just as long and detailed editorials on other blogs.
I don’t believe that debate should be squashed on this issue, but I think that despite the turmoil that still exists in pockets, Indiana is settling on Eastern Daylight Time, not because it is ideal, but because it is lesser of two evils that come into play with Daylight Saving Time.
Fall/Winter CST robs people of daylight after work. They may see daylight while going in to work, but anyone working a “normal” schedule doesn’t see a ray of sunshine after work for the ENTIRETY of standard time and even longer. Central supporters talk about the sun coming up later, but most people don’t feel robbed of their recreation and chore time by this phenomenon.
The “evil” of EDT is the sun is up “too long” in the summer. If your choice is sunset before 6 p.m. for FIVE MONTHS A YEAR (Central Time) or sunset after 9:00 p.m. (perish the thought) for 4 months a year (EDT), what will most people opt for? If not already accustomed to CST, most will find the lack evening light too abrupt, just as folks accustomed to Central have a hard time with darker mornings.
So, in the minds of most Hoosiers who haven’t experienced Central Standard Time for over 30 years, the evidence seems to bear out that EDT is just the lesser of two evils, not the perfect world as EST seemed to be for many. The failure of Central Time to garner political support at various levels of government seems to bear this out, and I don’t think the Chamber of Commerce bogeyman is behind it all.
Steve,I have never seen any evidence that most hoosiers think EDT is the lesser of two evils. Quite the contrary,when hoosiers were given the chance to voice their opinion they were overwhelmingly in support of CDT. Of course we preferred to stay in the optimal situation of EST before Mitch and his Chamber of Commerce cronies came along and screwed that up. Of course it’s not about what one prefers it’s about simple geography and I’m sure you’re aware that not one inch of Indiana soil lies geographically in the Eastern zone. If simple geography (UTC/GMT) isn’t a factor in determining time zone boundaries why call them time zones? Call them economic zones,chamber of commerce zones or whatever. Just don’t call them time zones.