An interesting historical note from INDIANA PARLEY: Time Zone History. Apparently back in the 30s, there was somewhat of a push in Chicago to get in the Eastern Time Zone. Actually, this passage suggests that Chicago was actually pushing for Hoosier Standard Time:

Beginning in October 1935, the Tribune pressed local officials to extend summer daylight saving time to a year-round basis, in effect placing Chicago in the eastern time zone[.]

As loyal readers are fully aware, year round Central Daylight Time is the same thing as year round Eastern Standard Time, which is what Indiana has had for the past 30+ years, but which will end this Spring.

St. Joseph County Commissioner Steve Ross has have submitted a comment to the USDOT docket (PDF) supported by what appears to be a behemoth study by Central Time stalwarts, John Gaski and Paul O’Malley. I haven’t read the study due to time limitations, but it’s something like 75 pages and the initial pages suggest an argument that St. Joseph County’s relationship to neighboring LaPorte County (which is in the Central Time Zone) dictate a shift of St. Joseph County to central time. Certainly, we’ve all heard a considerable amount about Elkhart County and it’s relationship to St. Joe, but not a lot of attention has been paid to St. Joseph County’s relationship to LaPorte County.

There is incontrovertibly a correlation between La Porte County’s lack of progress over the last 40 years and its position on a time zone border with an adjacent metropolitan neighbor. Given the tendency around the country, which has also been observed in Indiana, for industry to relocate out of older cities to rural and suburban areas it is contended that the time line location between St. Joseph County and LaPorte County (the shift in the St. Joseph economy from manufacturing to distribution and services is well documented in the St. Joseph County petition to move to Central Time) has diverted industrial relocation from La Porte to Elkhart County. In addition, it is contended that the position of La Porte County on the time line has inhibited distribution center development in the county and instead guided it to Porter County.

The argument goes, I believe — and hopefully Mr. O’Malley will correct me if I’m wrong — that having St. Joe & La Porte County in the same time zone would improve the economy of La Porte which would, in turn, provide reciprocal benefits for St. Joseph County.

The study further argues that St. Joseph County stands to benefit a great deal more by being aligned with Chicago than with Elkhart. Chicago simply has more to offer and is close enough to South Bend to actually offer it (unlike, say, Indy or other Eastern Time Zone metropolitan areas):

For La Porte County, on a local level, St. Joseph County should represent a significant source of investment, but, consistent with its time zone separation from St. Joseph County, the costs to it have grown worse over time, as may be reflected by its stagnant population and relatively low per capita income. For St. Joseph County, the best single source of new investment should be Chicago, due to its proximity and size and further due to the fact that St. Joseph County’s advantages over its neighbors are its relatively sophisticated workforce with a deeper pool of professional talent and skill intensive labor. In other words, St. Joseph County is more likely to be trying to attract headquarter and regional ofice type functions, which are espedal!y sensitive to time difference transaction costs. Elkhart County offers little in the way of being a source of potential investment of this sort into St. Joseph County. St. Joseph County’s middling pelformance may well be stunted by its time zone difference with Chicago. Indeed, Elkhart County’s interests would seem to be openly adverse to those of its western neighbors.

(Typos in the blockquotes are due to character recognition issues with respect to copying from a pdf document.)

O.k., really, now I’m out of time. But that sort of covers Mr. O’Malley’s portion of the study. Professor Gaski’s portion starts at about page 50 of the PDF document. But I look forward to reading it now that I see the first heading is entitled “Omnibus rebuttal of Key, Tendentious, Eastern Time Data and Arguments, and Background for rebuttal of Commissioner Dobson (post #1875)”.

Governor Daniels is now officially in violation of Ind. Code 1-1-8.1-3 which states:

Sec. 3. The state supports the county executive of any county that seeks to change the time zone in which the county is located under the procedures established by federal law.

The St. Joseph County Board of Commissioners is seeking, under the procedures established by federal law, to change the time zone in which St. Joseph County is located. That means the state has to support them in their efforts, right? Well, apparently only if you’re of the opinion that Governor Daniels is obliged to obey the law.

Governor Daniels has submitted a letter to the U.S. Dept. of Transportation opposing the St. Joseph County Commissioners’ efforts to change time zones. In other words, he is doing exactly the opposite of what the law requires him to do.

The pertinent part of his letter to the USDOT is:

I recommend the Department decline the petition of St. Joseph County to move from the Eastern to the Central Zone.

Nevermind that he makes bogus statements about the “clear preference” of Hoosiers generally to remain in the Eastern Zone and of Elkhart County residents specifically. The statements are bogus because no mechanism has been made available to most Hoosiers to express their preference. In fact, the Republican leadership has made clear its opposition to a referendum that would put this “clear preference” to the test. Nevermind that he continues his recent insistence that time zones are a “local matter.” Nevermind that he forgets his campaign preference for statewide Central Time. Nevermind that he sat on his hands until the eleventh hour before offering an opinion to the public and to the USDOT.

Forget all that stuff for now. He is breaking the law. The Daylight Saving Time bill added a section to the Indiana Code that specifically required the state to support a county executive’s efforts to switch time zones. Instead of supporting the St. Joseph County Commissioners, as the law requires, Mitch Daniels is opposing their efforts. My apologies for all of the bolds and italics, but this is simply outrageous. He wasn’t ignorant of that provision of the law. His spokesperson was recently asked about it, and offered up an explanation of that provision with which only an illiterate could agree, alleging that the provision required support only of the process not the county executive seeking to change time zones. He wasn’t required to offer his opinion to the USDOT. He could have remained silent and presumably not run afoul of the law. Instead, he went out of his way to violate IC 1-1-8.1-3. Just outrageous. If I were the St. Joseph County Commissioners, I’d be headed to court to seek an injunction of the whole Daylight Saving Time law, delaying its implementation until such time as the Governor corrects his violation or the legislature repealsIC 1-1-8.1-3.

For those who are interested, video of one of the Daylight Saving Time debates that took place in the House is here. It starts at approximately 1 hour, 35 minutes into the clip. At some point, once I get my new computer(*), I’ll be interested to see if there was any discussion at that time about the time zone issue. I don’t know off hand if the 4/11/05 discussion and vote was on second or third reading, but my guess is the most interesting discussions about time zones would have occurred while debating amendments to SB 127. It’ll be good to get a handle on what was being said at the time of passage about deciding the time zone issue.

(*)So my computer went down a while back — hard drive crashed hard. I’ve been using my wife’s iBook for the past couple of months which I find annoying for blogging purposes. (I’m not trying to start a Windows/Mac thrash here — there are just certain configurations I’ve gotten used to on the Windows that are different for the Mac. So it’s personal habit rather than innate superiority I’m talking about.) Anyway, I finally got around to ordering a replacement from Dell. I get an e-mail saying it will be at my house on Tuesday, 11/22. Great. I get home, there’s a box. Just the monitor. WTF? At about the same time, I receive an e-mail — the box with the CPU was on a UPS truck that was stolen. They’ll send a replacement. I send a message to Dell to verify and to get a time frame. They say it should be there on Wednesday. Nope. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday pass. Now it’s Monday. If I don’t have my CPU today, I’ll be grumpy. I should’ve just gone to a brick & mortar store I guess.

The Indy Star has an article entitled Clock has expired for DST replays which says that now that the pro-DST forces eked out a victory, the rest of us should just shut up about it for the rest of eternity. The General Assembly, they say, should resist the temptation to reopen the issue.

Any compromise of a clear-cut identity for the state in the matter of time would dishonor the vote to spring forward.

“Dishonor the vote to spring forward?” Would that they had such concern about the votes not to spring forward. The State voted long ago to remain on Eastern Standard Time year round. There was no concern about dishonoring that vote. Prior Daylight Saving Time bills over the past 30 years died death after death after death. There was no concern about dishonor when new DST legislation was brought to the floor. The original Daylight Saving Time bill in the 2005 General Asssembly died in the House of Representatives. No concern about dishonor then. The Second Daylight Saving Time bill was defeated 50 to 49. No concern about dishonoring that vote. The DST bill had been defeated again 48 for and 49 against while Representative Bosma held the vote open long enough to get Representative Ulmer and Representative Troy “I’ll never vote for it” Woodruff to switch their votes. Certainly no concern about dishonoring the original vote on that one.

No, it would only be dishonorable to switch the vote now that the “business community” (which I take to mean executives who are movers and shakers in the Indiana Chamber of Commerce) got what they want. After all, according to the Star, it matters not a whit what us peons might desire for ourselves, only what the business community overlords dictate:

[T]he Indiana General Assembly early this year finally decided something the business community has long accepted: This state must get in step with the nation by following daylight-saving time[.]
. . .
[The details of Indiana time] must be worked out on the basis of business, not politics or sentimentality.

I guess the help should beg forgiveness for being too noisy.

Mary Beth Schneider has an article in the Indy Star entitled Time zone debate likely to drag on.

Rep. Dave Crooks says he’ll introduce a bill that would pose a referendum question to the voters, asking “whether all but five southeastern Indiana counties should be placed in the Central time zone.” Rep. Steve Heim wants to make the question ask “whether Indiana should observe Eastern Daylight Time or Central Daylight Time.” As between the two of them, I think Rep. Heim has the right of this one. Indiana is 140 miles wide, a pretty narrow east-west state. Let’s put us on one time zone or the other. Besides, the southeastern counties have been breaking the law for 30 years, observing Daylight Saving Time without being authorized to do so. They’ll probably do what they want in the future anyway.

Meanwhile, Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-Lakeville, wants to repeal the law passed earlier this year that moves all of Indiana to daylight-saving time.

The indication from the Speaker of the House Brian Bosma is that he won’t give these bills the time of day. (Sorry, it’s early.) Though from the article, it’s not clear if he was asked about the referenda bills or whether he just dodged the question. His response indicates only a disrespectful attitude to those Hoosiers who wanted to leave our prior system in place. It worked well enough for us for the past 3 decades, but from Bosma’s response, he apparently just thinks such folks are worried about being too stupid to change their clocks.

“We are debating whether Hoosiers are smart enough to change their clocks twice a year,” House Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, said derisively, “while the rest of the world is on the same clock time and are attracting jobs that won’t locate here in Indiana. We need to talk about the future, not the past. In my book, this was debated last session. I see no reason to reopen the debate.”

Got it? The only reason Mr. Bosma apparently thinks we wouldn’t want to mess with the current system is that we’re afraid of being too stupid to change our clocks.

But, back to the referendum question. Sen. Garton perpetuates a meme about the time zone referendum that I think is disingenuous. And he’s not the first one. So I think it’s important to nip it in the bud.

Still, Garton is no fan of statewide referendums.

“It’s just so doggone misleading,” Garton said. “People (might) say, ‘We should be on the Central time zone. You make it happen.’ And we can’t.”

Garton said any referendum would be advisory only; Indiana doesn’t have binding referendums as does California, for example. And the legislature, he said, can’t make the federal government move the time zone line.

I addressed this in response to Tracy Warner a couple of days ago. No, the State of Indiana can’t make the U.S. Dept. of Transportation change the time zone. But, it can make a state-wide recommendation that is likely to receive a considerable amount of deference. Here is how I put it in that response:

A time zone referendum wouldn’t be to directly overturn the USDOT decisions. Rather, I suspect the legislation would call for a referendum and then direct the General Assembly and/or the Governor to petition the USDOT to move *all* of Indiana to that time zone and to provide documentation supporting the decision.

The current, county-by-county approach being used by the USDOT was only the result of the State not taking a position one way or the other when Governor Daniels submitted his request for hearings. If the State submitted an adequate request (something that wasn’t done before) to shift the whole state into one time zone; then the USDOT would issue its Notice of Proposed Rule Making and look at the time zone issue from a statewide perspective rather than from a county-by-county perspective.

I suspect the USDOT would *love* to put the whole state on one time zone, regardless of which one.

I’m sure there are a number of policy reasons arguing against having a referendum. “It wouldn’t do any good.” isn’t one of them.

Tracy Warner has a post up entitled A timely vote? I posted such a herniated response, I thought I’d cross-post to my blog.

Mr. Warner says, in pertinent part:

What could be more democratic than a statewide referendum that gives Hoosiers the chance to vote on Indiana being in the central of eastern time zone? If only the issue were that simple.

State Rep. Pat Bauer, who heads the minority Democratic caucus in the Indiana House, said Democrats will seek the referendum in the 2006 legislative session. As Niki Kelly reports:

House Minority Leader Pat Bauer, D-South Bend, said his caucus will pursue two other major initiatives -– seeking a November 2006 referendum on what time zone the state should be in and a bill giving lawmakers oversight over certain privatization deals.

Such a move will take up valuable legislative time that would likely be wasted. First of all, I don’t see how the referendum could be binding; it is the federal Department of Transportation that establishes time zones. Congress could override the DOT decision with a law, but the state legislature can’t.

The idea of putting the entire state in one time zone is certainly appealing, but as Indiana learns more about the issue, it doesn’t seem possible. The northwest Indiana counties are adamant that they must stay in sync with Chicago and central time. Southeast Indiana counties demand that they remain in sync with Cincinnati and Louisville and eastern time.

If Bauer and the Dems make this a chief cause, it will hurt the party and only open more time zone wounds while solving little to nothing.

My response over at Tracy Warner’s site:

A time zone referendum wouldn’t be to directly overturn the USDOT decisions. Rather, I suspect the legislation would call for a referendum and then direct the General Assembly and/or the Governor to petition the USDOT to move *all* of Indiana to that time zone and to provide documentation supporting the decision.

The current, county-by-county approach being used by the USDOT was only the result of the State not taking a position one way or the other when Governor Daniels submitted his request for hearings. If the State submitted an adequate request (something that wasn’t done before) to shift the whole state into one time zone; then the USDOT would issue its Notice of Proposed Rule Making and look at the time zone issue from a statewide perspective rather than from a county-by-county perspective.

I suspect the USDOT would *love* to put the whole state on one time zone, regardless of which one. Certainly the people next to the time zone line, wherever it is, will complain bitterly. That’s just inevitable.

As a matter of politics, I don’t think this hurts the Democrats a bit. It sounds reasonable. Most people tend to agree in the abstract that the state should be on one time zone. People who are reasonably happy with the current time zone situation won’t vote *for* Mitch Daniels and the Republicans because of it. But a fair number of people who are disgruntled will vote *against* them because of it. Daniels has been wishy-washy, waffly, and deceptive about his time zone position. At this point, it only hurts Daniels, it doesn’t help him. The longer it stays in the public eye, the more of a bleeding wound it is for Daniels in particular, and somewhat Republicans generally — particularly Republicans in the western part of the state. (Troy Woodruff leaps immediately to mind.) So politically, the Democrats are positioned pretty well on this one.

As a practical matter, it won’t happen. The House Republicans don’t want to exacerbate their problems and the Indiana Chamber is pretty committed to Eastern Daylight Time, so they won’t allow a referendum to get any traction. Senator Garton just dislikes referendums (referenda?) generally, so it won’t get any traction in the Senate.

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.

In the comments to the South Bend hearing post I put up earlier this morning, Paul O’Malley provided a summary of the South Bend hearings that, I think, does a much better job of describing the proceedings than the news reports I’ve seen so far (in the Indy Star and at WNDU.) The South Bend Tribune may have a decent story, but they don’t post their new content until 10:00 A.M. So, I wanted to move Paul’s commentary to the front page:

I attended the meeting last night (Monday 21 November) in South Bend. I see that the newsmedia is picking up on the “don’t divide the state or these counties” theme, effectively muting the point that was made last night, if too softly, that the state is divided and an important county pair (St. Joseph-La Porte) is divided.

Official Elkhart County though was certainly united. While once upon a time they publically ruled out opposing St. Joseph County on this issue, they showed up in force to pick at St. Joseph County’s arguments (which they did to some effect) while putting up little of their own other than our being on Central would be an inconvenience for Michigan. Of course, with the DOT saying that they will not move any county that has not petitioned, Elkhart County has the luxury of being on offense all the time.

La Porte County sent only one commissioner. I do not recall hearing from any Porter or Lake County officials. I really think that the NW part of the state is missing an opportunity here to solidify a NW political alliance which brings St. Joseph into their fold. I know folks in South Bend worked this angle, but it hasn’t paid fruit yet. My feeling is that La Porte County, which has no choice but to stay with Central for the well being of most of commuting residents, is being hurt economically by being the tail end of the Central time Zone. I would refer folks to a story that appeared in Site Selection magazine as a starting point for this:
http://www.siteselection.com/issues/2005/jul/p408/

A young man from Chesterton (Porter County) gave what I thought the most elegant plea for Central Time of the evening, (and here I summarize, I hope my memory does justice to this man’s efforts). The young man identified himself as a student at IUSB, and apologized for his disheveled appearance, noting that he had been up since 4:00 am CST to make it to class). He suggested that Elkhart County’s apparent prosperity was built on manufacturing payscales which would prove unsustainable in the long run in the face of foreign competition, just as has happened in NW Indiana. He stated that it was time to stop defending the status quo of Eastern Time and its manufacturing orientation and to turn to technology, which would be better served by opening our doors to Chicago and the west.

One of the Starke County Commissioners wins a point for the best timing of the night. He arrived late, after the other public officials had spoken. Given his chance at the podium, he apologized for his tardiness, but noted that he had had a meeting in Chicago which had run late and that, (gosh darn) “they’re on a different time than you”.

Update The South Bend Tribune now has its story on the hearings on its website, and it does a much better job than the other news sources I’ve read today.

One quote I found surprising:

Elkhart County Commissioner Terry Rodino explained that Elkhart County officials chose to go along with Eastern time and not petition the DOT for a switch to Central. “When we heard St. Joseph County was doing it, we were very surprised,” he said.

Surprised by St. Joseph County’s petition to Central Time? This is not something that should have caught Elkhart County by surprise:

On or about July 31, the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District requested the switch.

Some time shortly before August 10, the Commissioners held a meeting wherein a general preference for Central Time was expressed, and the South Bend Common Council unanimously supported Central Time.

On or about August 12 the St. Joseph County Council voted in favor of a switch to Central Time.

On or about August 24, the st. Joseph County Council voted 5-2 in favor of a resolution requesting Central Time.

Finally, on or about September 13, the St. Joseph County Commissioners made it official in a 2 to 1 vote to petition for Central Time.

So, to me, Elkhart Commissioner Rodino’s suprise is surpising.

The article in the Indy Star on the South Bend hearings entitled Decision time: To split the state, or not? focused on the desire by many to put the State on one time zone or at least to keep St. Joseph and Elkhart Counties on the same time. The article had one factual error, however:

The U.S. government has said it will not move a county that hasn’t petitioned to do so.
That means the only way to keep the area on the same time zone is to deny the requests by St. Joseph and some of its neighbors to switch to Central.

This isn’t quite true. That’s one way. However, it’s not the only way. Elkhart County, or any county, can petition the U.S. Dept. of Transportation at any time for a time zone shift. This is significant and has been left out of almost all public discussion of the issue. The fact that it is possible for Elkhart County to file a petition means that the public debate should contain a discussion of why it is not incumbent upon Elkhart County to file such a petition if it’s so important to keep the counties on one time zone.