Lesley Stedman has a good column in the Louisville Courier Journal which captures nicely Governor Daniels ever shifting position on time zones.
Many county officials resented having to make the decision.
And they don’t believe it had to be so difficult.
When Daniels was running for governor, he not only endorsed daylight-saving time — an issue Hoosiers have been fighting about for decades — he also said he wanted to move as much of Indiana as possible into one time zone. He said both actions would reduce confusion.
And during the campaign, Daniels said repeatedly that he preferred the entire state move to the Central time zone, except for Clark, Floyd and Harrison counties near Louisville and two other counties near Cincinnati.
After the election and before the legislative session began, though, Daniels already had narrowed his focus to daylight-saving time. He said the time-zone issue probably would be a question for another session.
But — as Daniels and daylight-time proponents soon learned — there’s no separating the question of daylight-saving time from the issue of time zones in Indiana.
Contrast Governor Daniels position then with his position now:
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.
Of course, now he says that the jigsaw puzzle approach of having each county choose for itself, “makes common sense.”
Also of note, check out this article from the April edition of Governing which explores why the time debate in Indiana is so fierce. (Thanks to Mr. O’Malley for the catch)
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