The Elkhart Truth appears to be unhappy with Governor Daniels’ approach to the time zone issue.
As if the time-zone debate weren’t frustrating enough, now our governor is saying that it should be as simple as a letter from the U.S. Department of Transportation for most counties that asked for a change to get one.
“In most cases, it will be a simple ‘yes’ from the DOT,” Gov. Mitch Daniels told a Truth reporter last week. In others where a decision is not as clear cut, there will be hearings, he said.
That creates a couple of concerns.
First of all, his comments run counter to what the DOT has been saying is its protocol.
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Remember, it was Daniels who sold a slim majority of legislators on daylight-saving time under the guise that the DOT would decide the time-zone boundary for most of the state by having between eight and 10 hearings throughout Indiana.
After the bill narrowly passed the General Assembly (with some help from a couple of local legislators, as you might recall), Hoosiers learned quite the opposite was going to happen. This decision wasn’t going to be regional and there weren’t going to be hearings across the state. The DOT said that individual counties were going to have to petition them for a change.
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Meanwhile, Daniels recently said that it would have been wrong for him to ask the DOT for one time zone for the entire state and that he never considered it. (Wrong because DST never would have passed the Legislature? That’s our guess. But that’s the only DST decision that really would make any sense for Indiana.)
The second scenario, and one that should be of greater concern to residents in Elkhart County, is that if what Daniels said is true, there is little doubt that we’ll be on a different time than St. Joseph County.
Makes me think of a good campaign tag line for Daniels’ opponents: “Mitch Daniels: All over the Map on Indiana’s time zone” — then maybe flash up the jigsaw puzzle of Indiana’s potential time zone. Probably no good since Daniels isn’t up for reelection for 3 years. Maybe someone could reengineer it if they were running against an incumbent who voted for DST.
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