Why wasn’t it time to move on last year or the year before or the year before that? Because the folks at the Marion Chronicle editorial board hadn’t gotten what they wanted: Eastern Daylight Time. Why is it time to move on now? Because they got what they wanted. So could the rest of us please shut up now?
I added the following comments:
I don’t buy the comment from Josh Needler, “the state is going to be split, so we all do need to just get over it and move on. If you want to live in the Central Time Zone so bad, move.”
I have heard the same “the state is going to be split” mantra from a couple of other Republican legislators who seem to be hoping this issue will just dry up and blow away. I would not buy it even if I were a Democrat, but I’m actually an elected GOP precinct committeeman.
There are a few flaws in this logic.
First, it is based on the red herring claim that there is something special about having Chicago to the northwest and Cincinnati to our southeast that magically prevents Indiana from ever returning to a single time zone, although all 92 counties got along just fine on central time from 1918 through 1961.
The reason I call it a red herring is that the five counties near Cincinnati and Louisville have been doing their own thing since 1967 or so, living on eastern time year-round while they were legally supposed to be on central time for 7 months out of every 12 with the other 77 counties not on year-round central time.
Even if the whole state were back on central time again, why shouldn’t the federal and state governments just keep on turning a blind eye for 12 months out of the year instead of 7, as these five counties keep on doing their own thing. The businesses who deal with these 5 counties are used to having them different from the rest of Indiana 7 months out of the year anyway, so 12 out of 12 shouldn’t be too big an adjustment.
Additionally, this puts the only time zone boundary within the state exactly where it’s been for 40 or so year, right next to the 5 counties who could put it on the state border if they cared to join the rest of the state on central.
Second, even if you think we should maintain the status quo, the status quo for the eastern 82 counties was central time 7 months out of 12.
Also, there is nothing so unique about Indiana’s situation that says we need to be the narrowest state split between two time zones. Alaska is 15 times wider than Indiana and has only two zones. All of the other 11 states that are split between two zones are between 2 and 5 times wider than Indiana — 3 times wider on average. We stick out like a sore thumb staying on two zones unnecessarily. It only takes the sun 13 minutes to pass from one side of Indiana to the other — far too narrow to justify the inconvenience to Hoosiers and our out-of-state customers and suppliers of staying split.
Finally, I know it’s been beat to death, but the nominal mid-point between eastern and central runs down the middle of Ohio. It’s pretty obvious to anyone who bothers to check that central is three times better at evenly dividing Indiana winter daylight between morning and evening than eastern, and three times better at shifting 60 minutes of morning daylight to the evening in the summer, which are the design goals of the standard time zones and daylight saving time.
*****
Richard wrote, "If the Eastern portion of the state did not observe DST, that does not make it Central Time! It is still Eastern Time."
This may be correct, but I find it a moot point. Call it what you want, but CDT is 5 hours from Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and EST is 5 hours from GMT. Our clocks read the same whether you call it EST or CDT. There is no denying that the middle 77 counties were with Chicago 7 months out of 12 the last few decades and with New York City only 5 months of 12. You can choose to interpret the facts however you want, but they are the same facts for all of us.
Richard wrote, "I believe more counties than Pulaski will petition of EST when they realize the mistake they have made. It will only take one Winter of afternoon darkness and you will see petitions again."
It all depends on whether you dislike your winter darkness more at the end of the day or at the beginning. There are some Hoosiers in both camps, and absent a statewide referendum, it's anyone's educated guess which camp has more in it.
I think lots of Hoosiers who are looking forward to the new later sunsets are going to be somewhat surprised to see that the sun waits about 6½ weeks longer than they're used to to start rising before 6:30 am (from April 2 to mid-May), and that it starts to rise after 7:10 am again about 8½ weeks earlier than they've been used to -- around the end of August instead of the end of October.
When you live near 40° latitude, as we do in central Indiana, nature decrees that we get ten hours or less of daylight from mid-November through late-January. Since most of the world does not observe DST during those months, this means that, on the average, sunrises are after 7:00 am and sunsets are before 5:00 pm during this period around the world.
By being on EST, which is the same clock time as CDT, we rob Peter to pay Paul. Instead of sunrise near 7 and sunset near 5 on January 27, when Indianapolis gets ten hours of sunlight, our sunrise is 7:57 am and our sunset is 5:58 am. This is about four hours before midday and six hours after.
Whether you think it's a good thing or not, there's no denying that we're effectively on DST this time of year.
Masson's Blog - A Citizen's Guide to Indiana -- Pulaski County may want out of Central
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