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.
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