Spoiler alert?
In the excellent movie Everything Everywhere All At Once, there is a great scene that is unlike the rest of the movie, where the noise/music/dialogue/action all stop and two rocks are pictured in a barren landscape.
The two rocks are two characters in the film, and one explains to the other that when there are countless variations of the way that life might have developed on earth, most of them end up with no humans whatsoever.
I think of legislation kind of like that.
In Colorado, hundreds of bills get introduced and most of them die. In some states there are thousands of bills introduced, and almost all of them die. Same for Washington D.C., where a small percentage of the bills introduced actually become law.
All of this is to say that while I would have loved it if Colorado had been a real leader on bringing around clock sanity, it was not, as hard as I tried. And I tried and tried.
But that was OK. A bunch of other states took the lead, and I was happy to be of help in nearly all the states where progress got made.
Until today, however, I never got to attend a bill signing. The closest was in a state where my schedule would have allowed it, but then Covid came…
So what a thrill it was to be in the office of Gov. Jared Polis to witness the signing of a #LockTheClock bill, making Colorado the 22nd state to actually pass something.
The scene was somewhat chaotic, but a helpful staffer provided this photo:
This is moments before he handed me one of the two pens that he used, one for the House sponsor, Cathy Kipp, and the other for me.
Getting a pen is a nice nod, and Gov. Polis mentioned specifically that my pen came via a request from a bill sponsor who was not there, Jeff Bridges.
(I wonder if a staffer has to make sure each pen is actually working before they put it on the desk.)
So now, finally, I get to add Colorado to the list that I started back about four years ago keeping track of what has happened. Being the 22nd state is great, it means at least Colorado is in the first half of the country that wants some clock sanity.
This victory belongs to the sponsors, but also to a long list of legislators that have tried to get this done over the last 20 years, including Greg Brophy, Ray Scott, and Paul Weissmann.
And Colorado may actually be the last state to pass this type of bill. If the federal government keeps moving forward as it seems to be, then we will enter a new phase where states may have to decide what time zone they want to land in permanently. That may happen, may not, it is just not clear. But if it does I think that will be up to the legislatures and perhaps the voters of each state. I will likely sit out of those discussions as I have never had that strong of feelings one way or the other. As long as the clock stops changing, I’ll be a happy camper.
But those are discussions for the future. For today, I will to take the W, and continue to be a proud son of the Colorado, which has in its state flag a golden sun in the middle of the C. I would like to think that sun is just a bit happier today.