The Governor has, by fiat apparently, mandated that bars can stay open past the time designated by the legislature:
Indiana Bars Won’t Lose Hour of Business to DST.
I don’t really mind bars getting to stay open later, but I’d sure like to know where the Governor gets the authority to tell bar owners that they can stay open past 3 a.m. (When Daylight Saving Time strikes, it will automagically advance the time from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. — meaning bars should close, per Indiana law. But, the Governor is apparently “decreed” that bar owners can stay open until 4 a.m. or that, in their bars Daylight Saving Time can be ignored for an hour, or something.) No executive order has issued, incidentally.
This might also be a good place to mention that, with Daylight Saving Time being imposed weeks earlier than it was last year, sunrise will not take place until about 8:10 a.m.
Hi, Doug. Thanks for the post. I had seen the news item, but had not thought about it going against the concept of the executive branch “executing” the laws duly passed by the legislative branch.
We seem to have enough trouble these days with legislation from the judicial branch, without the executive branch jumping in as well.
By the way, I think you’re in the Lafayette area. It’s just a little quibble, but the USNO gives a sunrise of 8:06 am for Lafayette on 11 March 2007 with DST.
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneYear.html#forma
Indy is only 8:03 am.
However, I am a big fan of establishing what is the baseline for reasonable, and also a fan of earlier sunrises for Indiana. The “normal” or “typical” sunrise time for locations at Indiana’s latitude is 7:18 am. Before DST was shifted back to the second Sunday of March, it would have been 6:18 am. You can confirm this pretty easily by plugging in cities near Indiana’s latitude and near the center of their time zones into the USNO page.
Philadelphia is 6:19 am (pre DST), Saint Louis 6:19 am, Denver 6:18 am, Reno 6:17 am.
Between being in the wrong time zone and going on DST earlier, the Hoosiers like me who like to see the sun in the morning are really getting robbed.
Regards, Bill Starr
Columbus, Indiana
Thu, 8 Mar 2007, 7:17 pm EST
And those of us who’ve hated the pre-5pm sunsets can’t wait…
Funny though–if the guvner thinks the time changes were such a good idea, why does he have to micromanage such that, at least in bars, 3 a.m. isn’t really 3 a.m. (if for only a day)? While he’s bending over backward to combat our premature sobriety, could he also make it so we can buy alcohol on Sundays?
Since DST starts in winter now, what good is “Spring forward”? There’s still snow on the ground (in greater Lafayette, anyway)! If this extend-DST trend continues, maybe we can get our congressional delegation to lobby for year-round DST. Once that happens, we can petition to move to Central Time (and have the old system back, under a new name).
Every move to lengthen DST at the federal level migitates the drawbacks of CST by shortening its duration. Even I, who abhor wintertime CST could live with it a couple or three months a year if it ever came to that.
In any event, fan of DST or not, it seems ridiculous to move the sunrise back to within five minutes of the latest sunrise at the winter solstice (Lafayette = 8:11 a.m. on 1/6 and 8:06 on 3/11).
Great post on the Richmond explosion Doug, I have some vague memories of the explosion. I remember going with my parents and grandparents to Richmond after that happened (I was 10 years old then) and remember them discussing that. That would be really cool if a debate could be held at the Richmond High School venue. I have a second cousin who is a teacher at Richmond high school. She is hoping Richmond can pull in a debate there. (Just as an aside, we are bitching here in Louisville about going to DST 3 weeks earlier this year, we are in tax season now, and are working 7 days a week now through April 17, thanks to Emancipation Day), 40 days until the end of tax season, none of us in the office are too excited about losing an hour’s sleep this weekend. The sunrise/sunset disparity isn’t as great in Louisville as in Lafayette (5-10 minutes maybe), thanks to us being farther south, but a bitch nonetheless.
The Governor was in my neck of the woods today in Southwest Indiana Petersburg I believe and stated that DST has brought many jobs to the state and is overall a great economic benefit!
I wish he would have addressed the bitter fight among residents of the five counties over time zones that has been going on since January 18 2006 when the DOT decided to grant the five counties Central time.I like living in the Central time zone but some do not.
Ever since this whole mess started the one constant thing throughout all the arguments for or against each time zone is that which ever time zone burdens you the least is the one most will argue for and find a excuse to support.
Myself personally whichever time zone is chosen will not have a negative effect on me.However I have always been and will continue to be a Central time supporter brcause I believe it to be the correct time zone for my state and more importantly my region of the state.
I have enjoyed reading the documents,two as of now prepered by the law firm Ice Miller.First there was the Joint Petition filed on behalf of the five counties which was to say the least a joke.It contained many nonfactual statements which were pointed out by rebuttal petitions submitted by Central time supporters that prompted and were referenced in a November 14 correspondence from the DOT to Ice Miller asking them to correct their petition and elaborate on misleading statements.
On December 6 Ice Miller sent their response to the DOT along with some information from the individual counties.Sadly the first page of this petition contained yet one more incorrect statement along with a few others Central time supporters pointed out in submissions OST-2005-22114-5752(30pgs) and 5770(22pgs)Then each counties suppelemental was also responded to.
This firm has done very sloppy work in this matter they seem mostly to rely on telephone interviews with pro-Eastern time people who many times do not tell them the truth and they never bother to verify the information so they end up turning in incorrect facts.Seems like a big law firm like Ice Miller would have a fact checker or research person.
I stumbeld onto a online discussion of some folks from the INDY area poking fun at us down here in Southwest Indiana over the time zone situation and do not understand what all the fuss is about.I asked how they would like a time zone line in their backyard perhaps divding Marion county with it’s neighboring counties because that’s what all this is about down here schedules and where one works.
Many Toyota workers working at the Princeton plant in Gibson county the original Central time zone want the counties to stay Central,thousands of Crane employees from Eastern time counties but working at Crane in Martin county want Martin county back on Eastern time.Of course there are other places people work at where the time zone boundary comes into play but those are the big two.I almost forgot in the Knox county case you have people from Illinois crossing over into Indiana to work and people from Indiana crossing over to Illinois to work.
Now of course these people dealt with this time zone problem before the move but it was considered workable since it was only a little over five months a year.If the counties go back to Eastern it will be twelve months a year.
In a nut shell it’s not about getting dark too early or the big convenience of commerce argument but rather where you live,work,and do business and which time zone serves you personally best.Oh there’s a few who complain about this or that but the real deal is which time zone serves you best and will least inconvenience you.I for one do not mind people poking fun at the area because the commissioners in the area look like idiots thereby making we residents look foolish.So the first chance we had in Martin county we voted the the only commissioner running last year out of office who had switched his vote from Central to Eastern.
After all the bluster about commerce coming from some people,mainly the chamber of commerce about the negative effects of Central time and despite a mass email campaign by the Dubois county chamber of commerce there are only a handful of businesses participating in the Joint Petition to move to Eastern time out of thousands of businesses in the five counties.I think one from Daviess,one or two from Martin,one from Pike,several from Dubois,and one or two from Knox.
A few of the Dubois county businesses such as Kimball International which had a record year and Jasper Engine Exchange are global companies which makes a time zone debate laughable as far as their concerned.I even remember the Kimball spokesman saying after the time zone was decided by the DOT to be Central for the region that it really wouldn’t effect the company.
In the end the counties will probably go back to Eastern time but it will not be about convenience of commerce but rather politics.Even the great Central time champion state Rep Dave Crooks who advocated Central time and a time zone referendum all the way up to the November election flip flopped on the issue,killed his own time zone referendum bill because he said it wouldn’t pass and said he will tell the DOT to switch the counties to Eastern time.
Crooks said he is taking this position because a survry he sent out to around 2300 people came back with 1360 people supporting Eastern time.Of course he represents 61,000 people but what the hell.His opponent in the election was a Eastern time supporter who was crushed in the election.
I put out signs for Crooks,mailed letters urging people to support him and donated money to his campaign.It seems every time I get behind a politician because of their position on issues I agree with they get elected and pull a flip flop on me.Oh well fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me!
Does anyone recall the name of the group associated with the Chamber of Commerce that doled out those big campaign contributions to the people that voted for DST? Does anyone know where you can find a list of legislatures and their campaign finance records. Does anyone know how much the taxpayers have been soaked so far by Ice Miller to lie to the DOT? I plan on writing a letter to Voice of the People to expose this sham.
“T” wrote, “And those of us who’ve hated the pre-5pm sunsets can’t wait…”
Although Hoosiers are not very used to them, pre-5pm sunsets are at least normal for our latitude.
Simplifying, it would be reasonable to expect that the sun would rise after 7 am and set before 5 pm during the time of the year that there is less than 10 hours of sunlight (5 before midday and 5 after).
Indianapolis has less than ten hours of daylight from about Nov 15 until Jan 26 — just under 2½ months.
Before there were time zones, Indianapolis and everyone due east and west around the world (latitude of 39.8 degrees north) had their sunrise after 7 am the 2½ or so months from about Nov 28 until February 9 and had their sunset before 5 pm the 2½ or so months from Oct 31 until January 15.
If you look at the USNO riseset figures for the “sister” cities of Indianapolis at about our latitude and very near the center of their time zones (Philadelphia, St. Louis, Denver, and Reno), you can see that this is very typical for our latitude.
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneYear.html#forma
Most of us in Indiana just had full-time central daylight time (aka eastern standard time) for so long, which amounted to about 45 minutes of year-round daylight saving time for our longitude, that these times seem kind of unusual to us, although they are really typical for our distance from the equator.
Bill
Fri, 9 Mar 2007, 7:14 am EST
The Indiana Chamber’s political action committee is called “Indiana Business for Responsive Government.” You can search Indiana campaign finance records here.
Since it takes the sun about 15½ minutes to pass overhead from Indianapolis to the middle of our nearest time zone (90 degrees longitude), the corresponding times to 7 am and 5 pm would be about 6:44:32 am and 4:44:32 pm for Indianapolis.
So if Indiana were back in the central time zone again, we would expect to see the sunrise after 6:45 am from about Nov 29 to Feb 9 and the sunset before 4:45 pm from about Oct 31 to Jan 15.
This was the norm for Indiana on central time until the 1960’s when most of the state went to year-round central daylight time (aka eastern standard time).
Bill
Fri, 9 Mar 2007, 7:43 am EST
The evidence that school start times that push kids into getting up and even starting school in the dark hurts educational performance has become much stronger in recent years. The National Sleep Foundation summarizes these findings at:
http://www.sleepfoundation.org/site/c.huIXKjM0IxF/b.2427705/apps/nl/content3.asp?content_id={A921B909-6D7B-4372-B0AC-58A534428D47}¬oc=1
They dance around the sunrise issue a bit, but they do state that children wake and sleep patterns are biologically determined and their recommendations are obviously aimed at making sure kids start school well after sunrise for the full school year. Eastern Time Zone Indiana is dead center of what is about the worst possible place to be growing up, at least if you are interested in getting any benefit from going to school.
I just knew there had to be a DST post here. I’m going to try something new this year. Stay on EST at home (when it really matters to me) and go on EDT as required, such as at work, in my car, when making appointments. Mornings will still be a bear, as I’ll have to get to work an hour earlier than normal–and it will be dark. Otherwise, though, I’ll have semi-normal sunsets. Semi-normal being what I’ve become used to after so many years of year-round EST. Also, the TV and radio shows will come on an hour earlier, just like they used to. My parents think I’ll last about a day. But even my pro-DST brother is against DST starting in March. Might convert him yet.
Also, last night the BBC ran an interview with someone who blew holes in the “saving energy” argument in favor of DST. Phillip will probably appreciate this: The person said that America’s energy consumption in the summer is always high because of air conditioning usage. DST does not decrease use of air conditioners. (And some of us know from last year that DST in Indiana may actually increase air conditioner usage.) Electric lights are not the only energy usage that matters. Sorry, I was sorto half-asleep and didn’t catch the man’s name. Basically, the man said that Congress passed this bill with the DST provision because they wanted to do *something*, but don’t really have the knowledge to make legislation that might actually reduce energy consumption.
I don’t care what everyone else was doing. Our way was better. Daylight in the morning is no use to me, as I am working. We should be on year-round Central Daylight Time. The forever-night that descended on my life this fall and has finally lifted simply sucked big time. It’s the last thing I would have wanted after 35 years of the other way. If daylight is worth “saving”, let’s “save” it year-round.
OK–let’s deal with the school issue. Does school go from 8-3 now? Is that right? I know the kids in my neighborhood get on the bus at 7-7:20. Why not make school be from 8:30-4, or something like that? Push the pickup time to 7:30 or so? Then they’ll be in the dark for maybe a week or so, right? Is the problem that they have to be out the door before parents go to work? If so, why? I mean, they’re coming back home two hours before the parents get home from work, right? If the kids are too sleepy to perform in the dark, then start THEIR day later. It’s a much more reasonable solution than having me give up all daylight post-work activities three months per year so their performance improves (especially since when I was in their shoes, my performance was just fine).
T-
Obviously teachers, parents and bus drivers should all change their schedules to accommodate you. It really is selfish to think about them rather than you.
Pila,
I had always suspected that the energy usage claim by the DST crowd was a fraud since the study they relied on most was back in the 70’s I believe.Now days everyone runs air conditioners in their homes.When I was growing up we did not get airconditioning in my parents home until the early 80’s.
Here’s one of my biggest and most selfish reasons for liking Central time which will probably seem laughable.I am a huge sports fan and one thing I like is Monday night football starting at 8:00pm instead of 9:00pm.That way the game gets over at a reasonable hour,same with some college basketball games like IU tonight will be on at 8:00 Central time.I also like light in the morning.The one thing most people do not like is the 4;30pm darkness in the Winter but it’s only a few months a year so I can live with it.
The best system and compromise is the old system of year round EST the good old days but the Governor said yesterday DST has been a great jobs creator for the state.
A quick thought on the Chamber of Commerce saying Central time would hurt the economies of the SW counties.The unemployment rate for each of the five counties currenty observing Central time is lowerer than the bordering Eastern time counties of Greene,Orange,Lawrence,and Washington and below state average.The fact is neither time zone or DST has any effect what so ever on the economies and economic situation of any of the counties or state for that matter.I just thought I’d mention this since Ice Miller made such a big deal out of the unemployment rate but of course they never actually did any research so a Central time supporter look up the facts on the matter and submitted them to the DOT.
Yeah, that was easier than addressing the rationale behind the current school hours. We changed our clocks an hour so that (in part) students wouldn’t be in the dark for part of the winter. That was a reason that was given. So we’re changing the schedules of EVERYONE ELSE in order to accomodate those people age 5-18. Now what magical purpose does having them start at 8 serve? They’re done by 3, right? Why not 8:30-4? Is it a natural law or something? Do bus drivers have something important to do after they drive the buses? Can they not drive a half-hour later? Same with teachers. Not sure how that would be a big problem. I mean, it’s very good for you to opine that inconveniences to me just aren’t that big a deal. I’m not asking others to consider me. I’m just asking them to back up their reasons. If children really can’t perform early in the morning and can’t stand in the dark without their whole world going to crap, why have their days start at that hour? If someone says it’s because working parents can see their kids off, then I could buy that. Except that if the parents are working, then junior is coming home to an empty house anyway.
Or we could push the clock back two hours in the winter to be super-duper sure all the kids are awake and ready to perform, and have sunset at 3:45 pm. It would all be the same to me anyway, since it is dark after work regardless.
I agree Phillip: year-round EST is the way to go. At least it was fine for decades for most of us. ;-) There’s nothing wrong with wanting TV shows to come on earlier. That’s one of the reasons that I’m going to try living by EST at home and EDT outside the home this year. :)
I recently participated in a post card project with people from all over the world. We were all supposed to make postcards about ourselves and where we are from. I put “standard time forever” as one of the sentiments on my postcard. The intended recipient is from Switzerland, so he probably has no clue about Indiana’s time problems, but it was still sorto fun to make my feelings known about the situation. Having an opinion on DST is part of being a Hoosier, afterall.
I was disappointed to hear that Dave Crooks decided not to pursue putting the time zone question on the ballot for 2008. As you all have noted, it would be a nonbinding referendum from the DOT’s perspective but would at least give some quantifiable numbers for the DOT to look at, and would give Hoosier Voters a chance to give some hard data to the debate. Pila, my family is similar to yours in that there are varying opinions to the time zone question. I am a transplanted Bluegrass person and couldn’t vote on the issue next year in Indiana, but still, it would have been good for the Indiana Legislature to put it to a voter’s test.
unioncitynative,
I also would have liked to see the nonbinding referendum vote bill passed.In a email to Crooks he stated even if the bill woiuld have gotten out of his commitee and some how passed the House he was assured by the leadership in the Senate it would be killed.The last thing the politicians want is for the people to vote on a issue such as this.
The Evansville Courier Editorial view is that they were glad there will be no referendum as they seen this as a threat to their region of the state being forced into the Eastern time zone.They felt the large population centers in the INDY area and to the North would go overwhelmingly for Eastern time thereby swinging the state wide vote to Eastern in a referendum on the issue.