I’ve been working with state and federal lawmakers and staffs for years now, and often testify when it works out with my schedule and frequent flier miles.
There’s a hearing tomorrow in Maryland that I would love to be at, but I have a small cold with a cough, and given the Coronavirus fears, I’m worried that the other passengers on the plane might toss me out the emergency exit door somewhere over Ohio.
So, here’s a version of the testimony that I would have given.
If you live in a state that has a pending bill, I recommend that you go and testify if you want to see an end to the clock-changing insanity.
To do that, just find the bill on this page, and then look for the lead sponsor. Contact that person, and tell them that you want to testify.
When you get to the statehouse on the day of the hearing, there will probably be some kind of sign-up form. Find that to make sure they call on you.
Then when it is your turn, you can either speak from the heart, or read prepared testimony. I typically write something, but then just end up speaking without the notes. Writing it beforehand just helps me make sure I’m going to get all my points in.
Sometimes the sessions are recorded, sometimes not. If you do it, be sure to get someone to take your picture. You’ll want that later for sure. (You can send it to me and I’ll tweet about it from my #LockTheClock account or write about it on this blog.)
To help, there are some videos of a couple of the times I’ve testified on my videos page.
If you can, ask the sponsor to sit next to you, so that if there are questions about the legislative process, or whatever, you can defer to the lawmaker. That’s what I did recently in Atlanta:
And then just speak as clearly as you can, and make sure the mic is turned on.
If I was in Maryland tomorrow, this is more or less what I’d say:
Dear members of the Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs committee,
My name is Scott Yates. I’m the leader of the international movement known as #LockTheClock, but really I am just a citizen with a blog. There’s no foundation or institute or whatever. It’s just me.
Six years ago I started writing a blog because changing the clocks just annoyed me. Rather than complain about it, my wife challenged me to do something about it.
At first, I didn’t do much, I just wrote blog posts. But then I started reading the academic research about what happens when we change the clocks.
These studies were alarming. Heart attacks go up. Strokes. Traffic accidents. Workplace accidents.
I collected that research, and put it on a page on my blog. That collection of research then lead to legislators contacting me, and journalists around the world asking me to help them understand this issue.
You see, this was once viewed as a quirky, almost meaningless issue. The clocks are the clocks, and certainly somebody somewhere has a reason why they are this way.
It turns out that there is no good reason for changing the clocks. The history is a painful collection of diversions from other issues.
In short, the farmers are not the reason for Daylight Saving Time, and in fact the farmers have always been against the clock changing.
We do it now, really, only because we’ve always done it. The reasons are lost to the mists of history.
The thing that we know now that we didn’t fully understand when the Uniform Time Act of 1966 was signed into law was that the actual changing of the clocks is deadly. The most recent study issued just on the single issue of traffic safety says that 28 deaths per year are directly attributable to the Spring Forward time change. That’s on top of all the other deaths from heart attacks and more.
This is no longer a quirky issue, it is a legitimate public policy health issue. If a toaster came out that killed or injured hundreds of people every year, how fast would the government take action?
In short: The Government is in charge of the clocks. The clocks are killing people. It’s time to Lock The Clock.
Now, your next question may be: What good does this bill do? We need the federal government to take action.
I can tell you that every time a state bill passes, I let the sponsors of the two main bills in front of Congress know, and they are very interested for the news. And they use that information.
For instance, Sen. Marco Rubio has a bill to #LockTheClock. His co-sponsors include Senator Patty Murray of Washington State. She signed up immediately after the Washington state legislature passed a bill to put Washington State into permanent Daylight Saving Time.
So will this bill in front of you today actually fix the clocks for the people of Maryland, or will it just be a signal to the U.S. Congress? I don’t know, but either way, it is progress in the right direction.
There is no partisan angle to this bill at all. There is only good government. In these fraught times, the citizens are looking to our leaders to actually do something to show that government can actually work on behalf of the people. This is just the thing that you can do today that will make things better for real people.
Thank you very much, and I’m happy to answer any questions you might have.