The Terre Haute Tribune Star has a withering editorial on the subject of Governor Daniels and his decision to force the Daylight Saving Time issue:
In reality, however, the governor’s biggest first-year fiasco is one entirely of his own making. It is he who decided Indiana had a problem with its clocks and pushed hard to get daylight-saving time adopted by the Legislature.
Time has been a long-standing issue brought about by Indiana’s peculiar spot on the time-zone map. By virtue of its geography, the state found itself torn. The central and eastern part of the state felt pulled toward the East and its Ohio neighbors. The western part of the state aligned more with Illinois and, primarily, Chicago.
That dispute had been satisfactorily resolved through the years by a sensible compromise. Hoosiers would simply never change their clocks and do the DST dance. That left the state half the year aligned with Eastern time, half the year with Central. It seemed to work pretty well under the circumstances, despite some out-of-state dolts who couldn’t seem to grasp a simple concept.
Through underhanded political means and last-minute shenanigans by members of his own party in the Indiana House, Daniels managed to “solve†a problem that really did not exist.
The resulting debacle playing out around the state is especially intense in western Indiana, because that’s the area that will bear the brunt of Daniels’ misguided desires for DST.
The governor himself is likely to feel enormous heat on the issue next year during mid-term elections. If his GOP loses control of the House, which it only holds by four seats, he may have only himself and his DST policy to blame. Hoosiers in these parts are ticked off about DST and may decide to express their disgust with the governor at the polls next November.
Ouch.
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