Daniels speaks on the time zone

According to an article in the South Bend Tribune, Daniels’ offered some thoughts I find implausible.

The governor said his guess is that counties requesting a switch to Central time will simply get a letter from the federal Department of Transportation approving the request.

But the governor said it would have been wrong for him to have asked the department to establish one time zone or the other for Indiana, and said it never entered his mind to do so.

. . .

Daniels recalled saying during his gubernatorial campaign last year that he favored having as much of the state as possible on one time and that he could “see an argument for Central time” but didn’t prescribe it for anybody.

“The issue was to go from three time zones to two,” said Daniels, who noted that Central time prevails in the northwest and southwest corners of the state, and Eastern time is observed in the Louisville and Cincinnati areas.

“And then we have this zone of our own, and now we’ll just have two (time zones).”

Daniels said he is aware of arguments that Indiana is geographically located in the Central time zone, “but both the law and the reality is that, for most communities, it’s more a matter of living patterns, working patterns and not longitude.”

The law, Daniels said, asks “where does a given community’s commerce happen, where do people work, where do people most often travel to.”

. . .

Daniels said he might have alleviated the problem by expressing a time zone preference, but believed that would have been presumptuous.

Well, God knows, Governor Daniels’ watchword has always been “humility.” The last thing our shy, wilting Governor would want to do is be presumptuous. But, more than that, I never heard anything like this coming out of his mouth when DST was pending. If he would have said, “let’s pass Daylight Saving Time, and we’ll pass the buck to the counties to figure out which time zone they’ll be in,” there would have been a historic march on the State House by pitchfork and torch-wielding County Commissioners.

A side issue is that I think the Governor is wrong about the law. He says he thinks it’s more living patterns and working patterns as opposed to longitude. I don’t think this is necessarily the Governor’s fault. The Dept. of Transportation’s expressed preferences seem to indicate this.

The United States Department of Transportation has been given jurisdiction over the nation’s time zones by virtue of 15 U.S.C. 261. That statute states in pertinent part:

For the purpose of establishing the standard time of the United States, the territory of the United States shall be divided into nine zones in the manner provided in this section. . . . [T]he standard time of the . . . second zone (Eastern Time) on the seventy-fifth degree; that of the third zone (Central Time) on the ninetieth degree; . . . of longitude east from Greenwich. The limits of each zone shall be defined by an order of the Secretary of Transportation, having regard for the convenience of commerce and the existing junction points and division points of common carriers engaged in interstate or foreign commerce, and any such order may be modified from time to time.

The current time zone line in Indiana between eastern and central is established by 49 CFR 71.5(b). I’m not convinced that there are formal constraints on the power of the Secretary of Transportation to draw time zones as he or she deems appropriate. There appears to be a policy requiring a state or county official to request a time zone change and to answer as to certain criteria falling under the umbrella of “convenience of commerce,” but these appear to be internal policies as opposed to binding law. The three criteria suggested by 15 USC 261 are 1) the geographic distance from Greenwich; 2) the convenience of commerce; and 3) junction and division points of common carriers. While the Secretary of Transportation may not disregard these factors, they are not exclusive or dispositive. For example, in OST Docket Number 8, Notice 91-17 with respect to Starke County, Indiana’s petition to switch time zones, the Secretary appeared to give a great deal of weight to public comments that did not directly address the convenience of commerce criteria specified by the internal policy.

In any event, if the Governor is correct, (which I tend to doubt) then this is how the map will look: