Time zone debate pretty much the same 20 years later

Jim Bognar was kind enough to retrieve and forward Federal Register entries (PDF) concerning the 1985 proposal to move the southwestern counties of Vanderburgh, Gibson, Posey, Warrick, and Spencer from the Central Time Zone into the Eastern.

It’s interesting to note that not much has changed, not even the point person on time zone issues. Joanne Petrie had the job then, and she has the job now. I’ll bet she was really, really excited to hear that Indiana was opening that can of worms once again. Really, the State of Indiana should probably be responsible for picking up her salary.

The new wrinkle, obviously, is that the eastern part of Indiana will be observing Daylight Saving Time, and that could change the equation somewhat. But, some salient points from the Register entry:

The proposal was championed by chamber of commerce types and defeated when it caused an uproar among the citizens, who commented negatively at the rate of about 3 to 1 against moving from Central to Eastern.

It has some good history of time zones in Indiana. From 1918 to 1961, the State was on Central Time. From 1961 to 1967, the time zone line was roughly down the center of the state, but largely ignored. In 1967, Governor Branigin petitioned for Central throughout the state. In conducting their hearings the USDOT found strong support for central time in the northwestern and southwestern parts of Indiana but support for eastern time without Daylight Saving Time in most of the rest of the state which led to the system we had until the most recent effort at DST squeaked by on the strength of Representative “I’ll never vote for it” Woodruff’s last minute change of heart. The USDOT was cognizant of the fact that, despite the nominal differences in time zones, Indiana was functionally on the same time in the entire state for more than half of the year.

The Notice of Proposed Rule Making noted that the USDOT had the authority to grant more or less than the petition requested. In other words, it has the authority to move an area into a different time zone even if officials from that area or state officials didn’t ask for it. Presumably, USDOT wouldn’t be eager to use such authority, but interesting to note that it has the authority.

The arguments presented during the 1985 rulemaking look almost identical to the ones being made now. Indiana should be on one time. Indiana is geographically in the central time zone. Kids shouldn’t have to wait for school buses in the dark. People want their TV schedules to stay the same. Indiana executives are tired of being laughed made fun of by their east coast counterparts. (O.k., I’m reading between the lines on that one.) People near the time zone line are the most interested in the issue. Time zone lines should run through rural areas. My favorite line from the Register entry, because I can imagine the author grinning as he or she wrote it, was mention that “others argued that the southwestern portion of Indiana is midwestern in outlook and in its dealings, and that changing to eastern time would be inappropriate and personally repugnant.”

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