Just a quick post from a hotel room in Topeka, the Kansas state capitol, to let you know that Daylight Saving Time is dead.
Now, we will still have to move our clocks this spring, and there’s a 50-50 chance that we will have to do it again next year, but I think that will be it.
You see, I’ve been writing about this issue for nearly seven years now, and I have seen the evolution firsthand. When I started people thought I was a kook. (I probably still am a kook, but that’s another story.)
When California’s initiative passed by a huge margin, and then Florida’s legislature passed a bill in 2018, people started taking the issue a bit more seriously.
In 2019 and 2020, when I talked to legislators and testified around the country, people would ask me if this was really going to happen, really wanting to know.
Well, after years of pushing the rock up the hill, this year I’m just kind of a witness as the rock rolls down the hill.
A good example is Nebraska, the first state outside of my own where I’ve testified in person twice.
The first time I came I got a polite reception, made all my points, had great discussions with lawmakers, but the bill just died.
This year I came to testify, but the sponsor of the bill, Tom Briese, (with the help of his staff) made so many good points that my main job was to talk about how this bill interplays with what is going on in Washington. The feeling I got from the hearing, from talking to a couple of other lawmakers in the hall, and from the staff, is that this bill is a done deal.
Me having a bad hair day in the Nebraska wind.
Lincoln is just a couple of hours drive through the heartland to Topeka, so I buzzed down to talk to the sponsor of a resolution introduced yesterday in Kansas, Shannon Francis. He’s got so many cosponsors for his resolution that he doesn’t see any problem getting a positive vote for it this year.
It’s not just in America’s Breadbasket, either. New York State has a promising bill and an active sponsor and staff. The silence in years past from N.Y. was disheartening, so the fact that it’s now an open question is huge.
And in many of the 33 states that have yet to pass something, the feeling of inevitability is in the air. Get something done so that we’re not the last state in the country seems to be the new attitude.
So that’s why I say that DST is dead, and the clocks just don’t know it yet. It’s sort of the way that a fish flops around even after it’s been caught and is on the deck of a boat. DST is still flopping around, but…
(And by the way, when I say that DST is dead, what I mean is that the clock changing is dead. The only decision to be made is which time zone each state will lock into, and lawmakers in nearly every state seem pretty clear about that. Texas is looking at asking the voters if they should lock into Permanent DST or Permanent ST, and a couple of others may do that. Once those decisions are made, the time zones will just be known as Eastern Time, Central Time, Mountain Time, and Pacific Time, etc. What a relief that will be!)
So, there’s still some work to be done, and I’m still happy to work with lawmakers around the country and in DC, but now it’s just me giving a slight nudge or hint here and there. The ball is rolling down the hill.
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.