Courtesy of a reader, here is Perry County’s petition to move to the Eastern Time Zone. I haven’t even opened the document and suspect I won’t get time to do so today, but wanted to at least throw a link up.
Update The USDOT had asked the Southwestern Counties for a second clarification of their initial submission. The response from their attorneys, Ice Miller, is here.
I actually read through the 150 pages of Ice Miller,skimming many pages to be sure.It’s very well-documented,with countless footnotes,verifications of comments made in first draft that USDOT rejected,I think probably due to unsubstantiated facts and comments.Although it seems overwhelming with so much documentation, the general theme is that these 5 counties have suffered inconvenience by having to deal with a time line in the wrong place and they included every possible example of movement of merchandise and of people tied in any way to making commerce, not so much profitable, but pointing out the inconveniences that had to be overcome of having to deal with a time zone division on the wrong side of them.Commerce includes hospitals,airports,all kinds of commuting,or movement of people,newspapers and TV stations.Commerce seems to be defined as ‘anything anyone does in a day’.Sometimes facts weren’t documented and were guessed at by someone in charge who would know, and personal experiences were included. Being a lay person myself, it’s the kind of documentation I would have a lawyer read it see what I missed. Who has the knowledge to read the countless footnotes and focus on the important ones to refute the presentation? I can’t imagine that Central time people would easily be able to answer using the same level of footnoting ,referencing and compliled facts and figures.It would take a great deal of time,and I would guess USDOT will make a decision in about a month,then give a few weeks for comments .
I don’t quite understand the weight of the Perry County petition. They want to observe the same time as the 5 other counties,so its not so much they have to prove their case for ET for their own county,only that they want to remain with the other 5 with ET or CT.
Lou,
We hope you will take the time to read through our response that will be forthcoming.Our responses the last two times were also well documented and referenced and will be again.There are what amount to a few businesses out of thousands in the five counties only one in the attachment from the whole of Knox county are complaining.
In the last correspondence from DOT they asked for a Eastern time support letter from Crane base.They got none that I could find but maybe I missed it.EG&G is a Crane Sub-contractor and was the only letter I saw relating to Crane.The Crane Commander told the county commisioners last year time zone did not matter in reagrd to Crane!I found the Central time hindering the ability of Crane to support THE WARFIGHTER talk amusing.Ice Miller copied this from the Washington Times Hearld in a interview they did last year with Cary Bledsoe a engineer at Crane and head of the employee Association who is from Sullivan county (Eastern time)Right after Mr.Bledsoe’s interview the paper published many letters to the ediotr from Crane employees saying all the accusations about missed shipments and hinderance of Crane being on Central time were a load of crap!The base does business all over the world!Ice Miller lazily copied this out of a old news paper article.
I noticed several mistakes YET AGAIN right away in this document and they will be addressed.
Do not forget it is the work of Mr.Byrd and Mr.Joyce in detaled rebuttal petitions why Ice Miller’s firt two sets of documentation were asked to be corrected,explained,and clarified by the DOT.In both responses by the DOT submissions made by Central time supporters are referenced and the DOT states they will make no determination until the information submitted by Ice Miller is proven correct and verifiable.Given there past history in these preceedings I do not blame the DOT as Ice Millers work to date in this matter has always contained errors.
The erros will be pointed out and actually it is quite easy to do since we live here in the region and they’re in Indianapolis relying on information which a lot of times turns out to be false information from Eastern time supporters who think we who support Central time do not know how to read and do research!
Phillip,
Good. Ive been following this debate for a long time and let’s hope to see both sides equally well presented. But I do think the basis of this debate is: are these counties,all six taken as a group, on the correct side of the time line for their own benefit?
Lou,
You make a good point as always.I think you can make the argument for either side.In my opinion the strongest and only argument the Eastern time side has is it is inconvenient being one hour behind the rest of the state.As the DOT commented on a few times to Ice Miller LLP what basis is there to show inconvenience of commerce between area businesses and destinations to or doing business with businesses in the Eastern time zone since Indiana had not observed DST for over 30yrs and those places have??
Lou,
If you have been keeping up with this did you read our second rebuttal to Ice Miller’s information that was requested by DOT in the November 14th correspondence to Ice Miller which lead to the this latest April 2nd DOT request??
Submissions OST-2005-22114-5752 and 5770
Perhaps this is just a simple question and it has already been addressed. Who is paying Ice Miller for this work? Also some of the information in the Perry County docket post looks much like Ice Miller. In this time of tight county budgets finding out how much this is costing each county and who is paying the tab would be helpful. Dating back to the Watergate days…follow the money!
Phillip,
I think DST is irrelevant to the issue.These 6 counties had been for 30+ yrs the same time year round as ‘upstate’ Indiana ,and now they will always be an hour behind. That’s the inconvenience.There were complaints in Ice Miller that business complained about early winter sunsets and that people didn’t want to shop in the dark.I kind of laughed at that one having lived my working life in the Chicago area many years,where on a cloudy winter day darkness starts to descend around 4pm. So give people time to adjust to winter darkness.It may take a couple winters.That shouldn’t be an issue.The afternoon winter commute was always
in full darkness. But so was the morning one.Winter is a bummer.Time takes a while to adjust to and whatever you have gradually becomes normal.It’s like just after flying back from Europe. I wanted to go to bed at 4pm and get up for breakfast at midnight. Our bodies really do have a ‘body clock’It always took about a week to adjust,and the older I get the longer it takes.What do people in Michigan do about 9:30 pm summer sunsets and can they get their kids to bed? They’ve had 30+ years to adjust.Some should be interviewed for the record
Jim,
I think but I am not sure something called The Indiana Econmic Developement something or rather is payingI do not believe it is the counties.They named the entity in a Perry county newspaper article a while back saying Perry county could not join the Joint Petition of the five counties so they had to hire a differnt firm which Perry county must be paying for.That should make those folks happy they’re mad as hell at their commissioners for requesting Eastern time if our five counties petition is granted in the first place .
They have had some heated commissioners meetings where residents showed up in numbers to support Central time with a 1000 name petition and 174 businesses in Perry county which is over half the businesses in the county supporting Central time and the school board also wanting to remain on Central and were told the silent majority wanted Eastern by the commissioners.I’m quite used to hearing that.It was the same in our five counties when this mess started again.Anytime people presented evidence or voiced support for Central time the commissioners in all the counties said the silent majority want Eastern time if however petitions or businesses are presented to the commissioners in support of Eastern time it is called by them “A Groundswell For Eastern Time” while the same kinds of things presented to the same commissioners in support of Central time is called meaningless!!!
Phillip,
I did go back and review a few of those docket numbers you gave above.It’s series of posts disproving or correcting facts given by Ice Miller,or questioning motives of Ice Miller.But what is the CT case in SW Indiana? It seems to be that the case is ‘everything is going fine on CT,so just leave it’.Why was there any petitioning in the first place? Wasn’t it because these counties were going to start observing EDT and that CT is Indiana’s manifest destiny for many and the argument rests on longtitudal settings,and correct,equal amounts of day vs night?I just think there’s a huge disconnect between why people who want CT want it, and the rationale that DOT will accept for assigning TZ.Therein lies the constant demonization of ICE Miller as the evil messenger. But for most people,imo, it’s the inconvenience of dealing with a time line,and most would accept either ET or CT to have unity in time.
The question is, as i see it, where is there the most inconvenience for the most people: crossing a time line traveling S and W or crossing one going N and E.?’Inconvenience’ means, I think, causing extra effort,man power or money or time in order to maintain the same level.It’s not profit itself but a negative pull on profit that forces commerce to take extra actions.I think that’s how DOT will look at it anyway.I also think the final decision could go either way.
Lou,
Your point is well taken.I think the over riding factor in this has to be where are the most commuters inconvienenced.Business can adjust.I know business is in fact commerce but but I really do not believe and it has been shown in most cases commerce and business is fine in the region.For Ice Miller to say early darkness causes more peole not to eat out is hard for me to believe.
In the April 2nd correspondence the DOT on the bottom of page 8 and top of page 9 challenged Ice Miller on their commuter numbers showing many thousands more would be inconvenienced if the counties switched back to Eastern time.
I hope it’s 50/50 being a skeptic I happen to believe the petition will be granted but we will see.
Phillip: I saw the petition when it was posted last week. It has a lot of gaps and misrepresentations. The most striking is “you have more daylight on EDT. Gee does that mean an 8:53 amount of daylight on a winters day can transform into 9:53 on EDT? Then why petition for EDT, why not ADT (Atlantic) get two extra hours of daylight. The time change only shifts the sunrise and sunset. Then they add to that with the more daylight = less crime. A lot of crime is drug related. If you need a fix and can’t afford one, you rob or steal to get the money. Darkness at 7, 8, or 9 will not stop the crime from happening. It may shift the crime to a little later. Some studies are showing burglaries are rising in the daylight hours because the perp can go unnoticed because they don’t have to turn on any light and arouse suspicion. point: amount of crime is largely unaffected by time zone.
Lou: It can get even worse than 9:30 in Michigan. In the Upper Peninsula. Having lived in North Dakota, 11:30 and still light in the sky in summer. The western UP has some of that same issue, real late summer sunsets. Winter, dark till near 10 AM. Grand Forks was better than the UP though because the UP had lots of Lake effect and lots of clouds in the winter. North Dakota has a high percentage of sunshine. The time zone isn’t really the issue so much as the latitude and the lake effect. It was great snowmobiling in the UP though.
Phillip,
I read through the latest response to Ice Miller.I still would like to see a pro-CT presentation. It’s easier to throw doubt on a presentation,than to give a presentation yourself. .And there’s too much condescension in the rebuttal and personal innuendo against those who gave testimony for ET.It’s unpleasant to read for that reason.We assume everyone has an honest opinion(even if they don’t),at least deal with it on that level. .Motives are speculation and have to be proven themselves and that’s not in anyway the issue on the DOT docket..(imho)let’s see a CT proposal gone over by ICE Miller point by point ( or the like)and see how it reads. Whoever you read last seems to be the winning side.
Note about browsers: I travel and access Massons blog on different computers in different areas.On some computers there’s a side bar with the latest contributions listed by time,so I can easliy pick out the latest posts. On this computer I have to go through each subject to see if there is a new contribution. Im just wondering why that is? Is it the browser?