The Indy Star has an article entitled Time change bill faces deadline. Today is the last day for bills to clear the second chamber of the General Assembly. After this, there will be a couple of weeks for conference committees to hammer out differences between House and Senate versions of bills. So, if DST doesn’t pass today, it’s pretty much dead for the season — unless the Senate does something really unprecedented with its rules, and I don’t foresee Senator Garton messing with Senate Rules for much of anything, let alone something relatively insignificant like Daylight Saving time.
The Indy Star suggests that the 5 counties in southeastern Indiana observing Eastern Daylight Time are doing so in violation of federal law:
Meanwhile, five counties in southeastern Indiana, despite federal law, observe daylight-saving time on their own so that their clocks can be aligned with Ohio and Kentucky.
I’m not sure that’s the case. As I mentioned earlier, I suspect those counties were grandfathered in by Pub.L. 89-387 passed in 1966 which allowed political subdivisions observing Daylight Saving Time in 1966 to continue doing so regardless of what the rest of the state did. If Ohio, Clark, Dearborn, Floyd, and Harrison Counties were observing Daylight Saving Time in 1966, it is o.k. for them to continue doing so even if the rest of Indiana does not. (On the other hand, rereading that provision it could be that such political subdivisions were only allowed to observe DST in 1966 and that those 5 counties have been observing DST illegally since 1967. Maybe if anyone has been defaulted for showing up to court late in those counties, they could petition to have their judgment set aside on the grounds that they were merely keeping time in accord with federal law.)
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