In a recent post, I commended a state senator from Alabama for trying to get his state off the crazy clock changing and stay in Daylight Saving Time year-round.
I also pointed out that he was doomed.
Since then a bunch of other states have legislators that want to make the world a better place by ending all the clock changing. Some of them don’t yet know that they are doomed.
The guy in Alabama, however, does know, and announced as much to the press: The Federal Government has control over the clocks. States can pass whatever bills they want to pass, the feds will just tell them, “Too bad.”
That’s why I’ve been advocating a radical but simple plan: All the states need to pass similar legislation saying that they want to get out of DST.
The bill would say simply: At the point that two-thirds of all states pass a similar bill, at that point we will apply to the Federal Department of Transportation to go into permanent DST.
If two-thirds of the states move all at the same time to fix this, it will get fixed.
I’m hopeful that Alabama will be one of the first to pass this new plan. The beauty of the plan, of course, is that it should be a pretty easy vote for legislators. They aren’t saying they want to be the first to change, they are just saying that if everyone agrees to change, they don’t want to be left out.
Alabama legislators are now considering it because they’ve learned the hard truth. Texas, Utah, New Mexico and probably some others haven’t gotten the bad news yet, but when they do I hope they will consider joining in this plan.