Tracy Warner has a post up entitled A timely vote? I posted such a herniated response, I thought I’d cross-post to my blog.
Mr. Warner says, in pertinent part:
What could be more democratic than a statewide referendum that gives Hoosiers the chance to vote on Indiana being in the central of eastern time zone? If only the issue were that simple.
State Rep. Pat Bauer, who heads the minority Democratic caucus in the Indiana House, said Democrats will seek the referendum in the 2006 legislative session. As Niki Kelly reports:
House Minority Leader Pat Bauer, D-South Bend, said his caucus will pursue two other major initiatives -– seeking a November 2006 referendum on what time zone the state should be in and a bill giving lawmakers oversight over certain privatization deals.
Such a move will take up valuable legislative time that would likely be wasted. First of all, I don’t see how the referendum could be binding; it is the federal Department of Transportation that establishes time zones. Congress could override the DOT decision with a law, but the state legislature can’t.
The idea of putting the entire state in one time zone is certainly appealing, but as Indiana learns more about the issue, it doesn’t seem possible. The northwest Indiana counties are adamant that they must stay in sync with Chicago and central time. Southeast Indiana counties demand that they remain in sync with Cincinnati and Louisville and eastern time.
If Bauer and the Dems make this a chief cause, it will hurt the party and only open more time zone wounds while solving little to nothing.
My response over at Tracy Warner’s site:
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. Certainly the people next to the time zone line, wherever it is, will complain bitterly. That’s just inevitable.
As a matter of politics, I don’t think this hurts the Democrats a bit. It sounds reasonable. Most people tend to agree in the abstract that the state should be on one time zone. People who are reasonably happy with the current time zone situation won’t vote *for* Mitch Daniels and the Republicans because of it. But a fair number of people who are disgruntled will vote *against* them because of it. Daniels has been wishy-washy, waffly, and deceptive about his time zone position. At this point, it only hurts Daniels, it doesn’t help him. The longer it stays in the public eye, the more of a bleeding wound it is for Daniels in particular, and somewhat Republicans generally — particularly Republicans in the western part of the state. (Troy Woodruff leaps immediately to mind.) So politically, the Democrats are positioned pretty well on this one.
As a practical matter, it won’t happen. The House Republicans don’t want to exacerbate their problems and the Indiana Chamber is pretty committed to Eastern Daylight Time, so they won’t allow a referendum to get any traction. Senator Garton just dislikes referendums (referenda?) generally, so it won’t get any traction in the Senate.
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