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)”.
Leave a Reply