Amid concerns, Rubio touts all-year daylight saving time
Wearing a vest equipped with flashing lights, Bob Eubanks waits in the predawn darkness for a school bus in Leesburg with his 17-year-old foster son.
“Standing on the side of the road in the dark is dangerous,” said Eubanks, 73, who has tallied statistics from news reports to underscore his worries about a bill passed by the Legislature with strong bipartisan support last week to make daylight saving time permanent.
He said more than 300 kids have died or been injured at bus stops in Florida since he started counting in 1995, the year his son Jonathan, 15, died waiting for the bus before sunrise. Eubanks foresees an increase in student casualties with passage of the Sunshine Protection Act, which still needs Gov. Rick Scott’s signature, an act of Congress and the secretary of transportation to issue a new regulation allowing the switch.
On Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio introduced federal legislation that would make daylight sav-
ing time permanent across the country. He also introduced the Sunshine State Act, which would give Florida approval to establish permanent daylight saving time within its boundaries if the nationwide measure fails.
The Florida Republican’s office listed several advantages to permanent daylight saving time, including improved physical fitness and reductions in child obesity and crashes.
Other proponents say the change would give many Floridians an hour more of after-work sunshine to bike, garden and golf, while tourists might stay later at theme parks and beaches — and spend more money.
But critics say it would wreak havoc on TV schedules, including pushing the late newscasts to midnight and tipoff of Orlando Magic west coast games to 11:30 p.m. The Times Square ball drop in New York, heralding the start of a new year, would fall at 1 a.m. Orlando time.
The Florida PTA, which believes the time change would endanger children, urged Scott, a likely Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, to veto it. Scott will review the bill when it makes it to his desk, spokeswoman Lauren Schenone said.
“We’d be increasing the number of kids we put in the dark in the morning,” said Angie Gallo, an Orange County mother and a member of the Florida PTA. “We’d be making tired highschoolers drive in the complete dark to school.”
But state Sen. Greg Steube, the lead sponsor, argued that Floridians are tired of going “back and forth” and changing their clocks, internal and external, twice a year.
The Sarasota Republican also said the change could boost the economy as winter sunsets would be about 6:30 p.m., not 5:30 p.m.
Year-round daylight saving in Florida also would mean never again having to “fall back,” but Orlando would be out of sync with Atlanta, Boston, New York City and Washington, D.C., all of which would be an hour behind the City Beautiful from November to March.
Only Pensacola and other Panhandle communities, which are on Central Time, would mesh with Eastern cities if the proposed change happens.
Florida’s other U.S. senator, Bill Nelson, has concerns about a switch for Florida if the rest of the country does not follow suit.
“Having Florida observe year-round daylight saving time without all 50 states participating would cause all kinds of havoc and confusion for businesses and the public,” he said. “Just imagine the mess of figuring out flight schedules or broadcasting prime time television programs.”
Orlando-area broadcasters, who often depend on programming feeds from New York, believe the proposed change would affect viewing schedules for prime-time shows, live sports, syndicated programs and local news.
“Everybody wants more sunlight in a day,” said Paul Curran, who oversees WFTV-Channel 9, WRDQChannel 27 and seven radio stations as market vice president for Cox Media Group Orlando. “But like the banking industry, the airline industry and the PTA, we have concerns with it.”
Added John Soapes, general manager at WESHChannel 2 and WKCFChannel 18, “We’re still really trying to get our arms around what this means in all aspects.”
Nationwide daylight saving time began 100 years ago during World War I as an energy-saver. By moving the clocks ahead an hour, backers believed the country could divert a bit of coalfired electricity to the military instead of using it for an hour of home power.
By 1966, airlines and other clock-watching businesses tired of such quirks pushed Congress to pass the Uniform Time Act. It codified daylight saving time, although it has been periodically modified, particularly start and end dates. The only states not observing daylight time are Hawaii and Arizona — except for the latter’s Navajo reservations, which do.
According to Rubio’s office, permanent daylight saving time would benefit the economy by eliminating an economic decline that comes every November when clocks move back, per a study by JPMorgan Chase; boost the agricultural economy, which is disproportionately disrupted by biannual changes in time by upsetting farm schedules; cut robberies by 27 percent in the evening because of additional daylight, a 2015 Brookings Institution report found.
Bob Eubanks, who waits at the bus stop on Tomato Hill Road with his foster son, Leesburg High School junior Seth Eubanks, said he only cares about safety.
His son Jonathan was struck and killed Jan. 12, 1995, by a pickup truck on a dark, foggy morning at a nearby bus stop.
A crusader for bus stop safety for more than two decades, Bob Eubanks has urged school officials to illuminate places where kids are directed to wait.
His casualty total is unofficial, as no agency tracks bus-stop fatalities and injuries, Florida Highway Patrol Sgt. Kim Montes said.
“I don’t really have any druthers about daylight saving time itself. But if you’re going to make kids stand out in the dark, you need to protect them one way or another,” Bob Eubanks said. “Put kids’ safety first. If it means putting up another 10,000 lights, so be it.”