Yesterday, the Indiana Legislature finally passed a bill which will require Indiana to observe DST. Currently, most of Indiana is on Eastern Standard Time all year round. I’ve lived in Indiana since 1985, and this issue has come up during nearly every legislative session, only to die somewhere along the way. It still has to be signed by Governor Mitch Daniels, but since he campaigned on this issue and put it near the top of his legislative agenda, we would all be stunned if he doesn’t sign it. This leaves (I think) only Arizona and Hawaii as states who do not observe DST. This bill will go into effect next spring when everyone “springs forward”. The bill was in serious jeopardy several times due to political machinations, mostly by the Democrats. I personally didn’t have a dog in this hunt. It doesn’t really matter to me whether Indiana observes DST or not. I find the concept somewhat repellant, but there’s something to be said for being in line with the rest of the country. However, it’s worth noting also that my mother taught me when I was about five that the argument of “everybody else does it” is not an acceptable one.
I think I have a somewhat unique perspective on it, however. I’m sure that everyone will figure out how to set their clocks twice a year, so I don’t worry about that. But, what about their computers? Right now my time zone is set to “(GMT -05:00) Indiana (East)”, and Windows therefore knows that I live in an area that doesn’t observe DST. So, come next April, will we have to educate everyone how to change their time zone to “(GMT -05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)”? In a country full of people who have VCR’s constantly blinking “12:00”, this might be troublesome. Or will Microsoft release a patch and move us all automatically? I hope the latter, but I guess we’ll find out in about 10 or 11 months.
It’s also worth noting that the bills requires the Indiana Department of Transportation to consult with the Federal Government to determine whether the bulk of Indiana will continue to be in the Eastern Time Zone or if we’ll move to the Central Time Zone, or if we’ll become a state like Tennessee with half the state in one time zone and half in another.
Once again, this isn’t a political blog. I’m just commenting on something newsworthy in my state.