Some thoughts on Daylight Saving Time

Greetings. I’m writing this before the general election results are in. So, what should we talk about? Well, two recent subjects that have flooded my emails are front license plates and Daylight Saving Time. Let’s take Daylight Saving  Time this week because its timely, pun intended.
President Trump and our U.S. Congress have a bill called the “Sunshine Protection Act” (H.R.13a). This bill’s intent is to make Daylight Saving Time permanent nationwide and put an end to our biannual clock changes. In Congress, the House has already passed this bill 308-117. The bill was then sent to the U.S. Senate and our Senate Majority Leader, Sen. John Thune, referred it to the Committee of Commerce, Science and Transportation.
Because of significant pushback, this committee pushed the hearing until after we pushed the clocks back (fall back). Probably a good move, making the urgency more prevalent after all of us have just lived through another time change. If the Senate does pass it out of committee, it would then go before the 100 senators for a floor vote. If it passes there, it lands on President Trump’s desk. If he signs it, presto, the entire nation is on permanent Daylight Saving Time. All indications are that President Trump will sign it into law if it makes it to him.
A couple of things. First, Arizona already does not change their time. They have never switched to changing clocks, so what happens if some states decide they want to continue biannual clock changes? Can they do this if they choose to do so? States rights come into play here. 
The framers of our U.S. constitution came up with an article in our constitution, which invokes states rights. Their thoughts were that “big brother” national government should stay out of state business.
In South Dakota, we’ve tried to pass legislation many times since I have been in the legislature. The true champion trying to get this done has been Rep. Lana Greenfield, a retired teacher and business owner from Doland, but to no avail. The time change bill always gets bogged down with several arguments. Well, if we’re going to stop changing our clocks, let’s make South Dakota one time zone. Then the debate is if we should go with East River or West River time. Because 75 percent of our population and our number of legislators are East River, you can imagine who wins that debate. Of course, the debate of permanent Daylight Savings Time or regular time should be year round. What seems to happen is legislators start amending the bill, and once that starts happening, it ends up killing the bill.
That brings us to our other hot topic of only one license plate, and that plate only being on the rear of the vehicle. We can tackle that subject in the next article.