A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

Perry County to remain on Central for the time being

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Kevin Koelling, writing for the Perry County News, has an article entitled “Commissioners adopt wait-and-see stance on time zone.” Basically, County Attorney Chris Goffinet put it on the agenda to facilitate the Commissioners’ consideration after various sources, including letters from DC Broadcasting of Jasper, Indiana; and an an attorney representing the Daviess County commissioners.

Attorney Jim Tyler was in the audience Monday and said the counties that successfully petitioned the federal government for a move to Central time based on those criteria will find it “extremely difficult” to use them to support a change back to Eastern time.

Also in the audience was Lock’s wife, Pam.

“Is the DOT going to change their guidelines?” she asked. If not, someone will lie in a new time-zone-change request or they lied in their last one, she said. “Is DOT going to throw out their guidelines and go with the whims of the people?”

The “are you lying now or were you lying then” line appears to refer to the dressing down Perry Pulaski County commissioners received from the USDOT when the Perry Pulaski County Commissioners apparently “represented that they did not provide accurate information in their original petition and misled the Department in order to strengthen their case for Central Time.”

In Perry County, there was a motion to petition to a return to Eastern Time that died for lack of a second.

No mowers after 8 p.m.

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I came across this minor wrinkle in the DST debate. In Monticello (and I’ve seen this story in other localities), a noise ordinance prohibits use of power lawn mowers — and other noise makers — after 8 p.m.

Prior to DST, this wasn’t really an issue since there wasn’t much daylight after 8 p.m. during the year during which to mow one’s lawn. Now there is. It is, perhaps, a minor issue, but it points to the larger issue of how DST expands the day and compacts the night, disrupting customary patterns.

Personally, I tend to head to bed at about 9:45 and get up at 5:15 or so. So I’m glad of ordinances that limit lawn mowers and the like, even if the sun still happens to be up — though, if it ever was a problem, I’d try talking to my neighbors before getting the cops involved.

Pulaski County gets frosty response from USDOT

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Pulaski County submitted a 285 page petition (pdf- long) to the USDOT requesting a change back to the eastern time zone. The transmittal letter is dated February 7, 2006.

The USDOT issued its response on May 22, 2006. Paul O’Malley accurately characterized the response as “frosty.”

The new petition follows the Department’s final rule by only a few weeks arid before the County had any experience with the new time zone changes that it solicited. Furthermore, the new petition conflicts with the County’s original petition and other information submitted to the docket in a rulemaking proceeding on time zone boundary changes in Indiana. The County Commissioners now have represented that they did not provide accurate information in their original petition. The new petition does not provide detailed information in support of its position or the sources for the information submitted.

The USDOT response goes on to compare and contrast the new petition with the original petition submitted requesting Central Time. For example, the original petitions states, “Industry receives and ships more goods and services to and from the Chicago business hubs than to any of the Eastern hubs” while the new petition states “85% of their vendors are in the Eastern Time Zone, and 80 to 95% of customers are in the Eastern Time Zone.”

At the end of the letter we find this:

In a May 1, 2006 teleconference with Departmental officials during a Commission Meeting, the County Commissioners represented that they did not provide accurate information in their original petition and misled the Department in order to strengthen their case for Central Time.

We were disappointed to learn of these assertions and the County’s approach to the time zone issue. Both for legal and policy reasons, the truthfulness of information submitted to the United States government is of critical importance. Indeed, it is legally required under 18 U.S.C. 1001. The Department takes seriously the review and consideration of any petition seeking a change in time zone boundaries and relies upon the accuracy of data and information supporting the petition. Therefore, we expect that the information and data you provide in response to this letter will be both accurate and truthful.

That’s a stunning bit of candor from the Pulaski County Commissioners, if the letter accurately represents the conversation.

The bulk of the letter identifies what the USDOT sees as deficiencies in the new petition and requests specific information in order to better evaluate Pulaski’s request to be placed on the Eastern Time Zone.

Knox County Commissioners vote to petition for Eastern Time

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According to WTWO the Knox County commissioners voted 3 – 0 to re-petition the U.S. Dept. of Transportation – this time to be moved to the Eastern Time Zone. I’m not sure what is up with the creative spelling in this report, but I did not alter the text in the following paragraphs:

Knox County`s Board President said it was a 50-50 issue with residents, so was it a mistake to ask the DOT to move to Central Time in the first place?:

“Today, it`s a mistake. At the time, it was the right decision. And the reason it was the right decision is cuz we asked the public, we had the chamber of commerce, we had the radio, we asked the public to attend our meetings just for that reason, and we just couldn`t get people interested. And so when the numbers started coming in, there weren`t very many, it wasn`t a good sampling, and we knew it wasn`t a good sampling, but at that time, it was definately for Central,” said James Bobe, President of the Knox County Commissioners.

Courier Press: Give it time

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An editorial in the Evansville Courier Press weighs in on the Knox County deliberations as to whether to re-petition the USDOT for a switch back to Eastern Time. They suggest that Knox County give Central Time a chance before filing a new petition. I like that the Courier Press gave us a refresher course on how the counties were dragged into this mess:

That no-win situation – dark in the evening or dark in the morning – is indicative of the time mess that Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels stepped into, and then exacerbated, last year when he took office. As a candidate, he pushed for statewide daylight-saving time and for all of the state to be in one zone; he said he preferred Central.

He got his daylight-saving time, but backed off on the time zone issue, leaving multiple counties to fend for themselves with the federal Department of Transportation. It is an unpopular move that Daniels will still be hearing about two years from now, if he runs for re-election.

More on Knox County considering switch to Eastern Time

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The Associated Press has an article on Knox County’s consideration to move to Eastern Time. Eastern Time agitators who were apparently not very diligent when the USDOT was considering the time zone issue last fall have obtained 3,000 signatures in support of Eastern Time. The Knox County commissioners will decide next week whether to join Daviess, Dubois, and Martin counties in requesting a do-over on the time zone decision.

Many blamed Gov. Mitch Daniels and Rep. Troy Woodruff, R-Vincennes, for the time-zone confusion and said the matter would be an issue in the fall campaign when Woodruff runs for re-election.

Daniels pushed the legislature last year to adopt daylight-saving time, with Woodruff casting the needed 51st vote in the House after pledging to constituents that he would never support daylight time.

Just a reminder of what the map looks like currently:

In any event, the county-by-county approach to timezones is and always has been ridiculous. It pits county against county and makes county commissioners try to solve a complex jigsaw puzzle where they only control one piece and have no way of knowing what the other pieces are going to do.

Fractal Politics

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John Hood, writing in National Review Online, takes a look at how the parties stack up at the state level. I was surprised at how evenly balanced the parties are:

Here’s how the numbers stack up as of this writing. There are 99 legislative chambers (Nebraska as a unicameral and nonpartisan legislature). Of the 98 partisan bodies, Republicans hold 49 and Democrats 47. Two chambers, the Iowa senate and Montana house, are tied. As a whole, Republicans control 20 state legislatures and Democrats 19, with 10 legislatures split between the parties. On the other hand, Democrats enjoy a slight edge in the total number of state lawmakers, at 3,663 to the GOP’s 3,643.

His entry on Indiana reads as follows:

Republicans hold a 33-17 margin in the senate, but only a 52-48 edge in the house. One GOP operative told me that he expects Indiana’s races to be “close and competitive” and that, for the foreseeable future, “they always will be.” Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels, former budget director for President Bush, had only a 35 percent approval rating in an April poll. This is one instance where a truly local issue may matter a lot: Daniel’s controversial and successful push to put Indiana on daylight-saving time. No kidding.

Can you hear me now?

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Yesterday’s newspapers had several stories with the theme being that Hoosiers are mad at Republicans because they simply did not listen on issues Hoosiers felt strongly about such as Daylight Saving Time and Toll Road privatization.

Gov. Daniels response: “I listen . . . *a lot*.” (O.k., so I added the punctuation, but that’s still a stupid statement — on par with George Bush’s debate standard, “this job is *hard*” and his more recent “I’m the Decider.”)

The South Bend Tribune covered the issue in a political notebook type article. The Tribune noted that Rep. Tim Neese drew just 2,862 votes in his primary victory, a far lower number of votes than “scores of other legislative candidates, opposed or unopposed, incumbent or nonincumbent.

Mary Beth Schneider, writing for the Indy Star, had an article entitled Republicans could feel voters’ ire.

Democrats say the GOP did not listen to the majority of voters who were saying no to daylight-saving time, no to the leasing of the Indiana Toll Road and no to a budget that cut education spending and forced local property tax increases.

This appears to comport with what Sen. David Ford (R-Hartford City) has been hearing from his constituents.

[Ford] said even he is hearing from a cranky electorate about issues lawmakers voted on in the past two years — and some they have no control over at all. “I still hear about daylight-saving time, the Toll Road thing, the war, the gas prices,” he said. “There’s a general feeling out there that people aren’t happy. They’re not exactly sure what they want. But they’re upset.”

I think voters know what they want: Don’t screw with the clocks, don’t sell off the Toll Road, don’t get into unnecessary wars. In short, Hoosiers are pretty comfortable with the principle of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Gas prices are a different story — there is too little oil and too much demand, we have to figure out how to use less, either through conservation or alternate energy sources. That, in my opinion, is a legitimate area of activity by the General Assembly.

An abbreviated version of the Mary Beth Schneider story was included as an AP story in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.

In the blogosphere, Taking Down Words covers the issue in a post entitled “Party On, Dudes: Republicans Grokking that their enemy this year is in the mirror”.

Gov. Daniels is trying to put a positive spin on the situation by noting that the legislators who were challenged on issues like Daylight Saving Time won by comfortable percentages of the primary vote. He utterly ignores the fact that the vote totals were small compared to primaries past. And that’s the problem Republicans face in the fall — not so much that Republicans will vote for Democrats in protest, but rather that their erstwhile supporters will simply stay home on election day. The timing is pretty bad for lawmakers on the Daylight Saving Time issue. Voters will have to change their clocks on October 29, 2006 and then head to the polls on November 7, a mere 9 days later.

Daylight Saving Time votes draw primary challenges

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There are several incumbents who face primary challenges based on the incumbent’s supporting votes for Daylight Saving Time, including two in my area: House District 15 – Art Anderson challenging Don Lehe, and House District 24 – Richard Eller challenging Rich McClain. According to this letter writer, McClain promised that he would not vote for Daylight Saving Time, and yet he did.

Lehe has the classic, “I voted against it after I voted for it” defense to DST. The two votes he cast in favor of DST on April 11, 2005, are the times he had the power to kill it, so hopefully voters will recognize his later opposition was too little, too late.

From the Pharos Tribune article:

But the Daylight-saving time vote Lehe cast is one that drew much attention. His face was on the front page of the Lafayette Journal & Courier when he cast a swing vote that forwarded DST to the Indiana Senate. Lehe says people forget that he later voted against DST when the bill was sent back from the Senate, but by then, the issue was moot.

Now, the election will be held just weeks into the first period of DST in over 30 years. The decision sparked a series of issues, including a request by his own White County officials to be moved to the Central Time Zone. That request was eventually denied by the U.S. Department of Transportation. District 15 is a rarity in Indiana politics. It is a state House district in two different time zones.

“When you elect these people, you expect them to mess with their money, but they don’t expect them to mess with their lives,” says Anderson, who has served two terms on the county council and run several times for the Indiana General Assembly.

Dubois County to petition for Eastern Time

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According to this AP story, the Dubois County commissioners have voted to petition the USDOT for a switch from Central to Eastern time. It was a 2 to 1 vote. Commissioner John Burger apparently voted for Central last September but has switched his stance to Eastern after various interests, including business interests, who were silent in September started complaining after the county was switched to Central.

Dubois was one of those counties whose petition to switch to central was initially denied. At that time, a Dubois County commissioner had said “they were done with the topic,
meaning the county will not try to supplement its petition to get
Central Time.” However, Dubois County changed its mind in November and decided to supplement its petition and resume its efforts to switch to Central time despite the preliminary denial.

The AP story out today stated “Martin, Daviess and Knox counties also will ask federal officials to return their counties to Eastern time.”  I knew Knox County was considering a request but had not heard that the Knox County commissioners had made a definitive decision as the AP story suggests. According to this WTHI-TV article Martin and Daviess counties had previously voted to request a switch back.