The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Legislators eye bill to put CT in new time zone
A group of Connecticut legislators is part of a region-wide push to move the entire northeast of the United States off Eastern Standard Time.
If successful, and if other states from New York north go along, Connecticut would use Atlantic Standard Time instead, and do away with Daylight Saving Time in the process. In effect, the region would be on Daylight Saving Time for all 12 months — up from almost eight months now.
“I just think it’s a practical means to handle something that we don’t need anymore,” said state Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague.
Osten signed on to the initiative this year, but state Rep. Kurt Vail, R-Stafford, has been submitting a similar bill for five years running.
His initial purpose was to eliminate daylight saving time, he said, so he had to choose. Should the state stay in Eastern Standard Time or move an hour forward into Atlantic Standard Time?
He chose the latter. “We’re on the easternmost tip of Eastern Standard Time,” he said — so darkness comes earlier than in the rest of the time zone.
The bill would not actually change anything for most of the year. The next time we “spring forward,” as the saying goes — that’s March 14 this year — Connecticut would just stay there, not “falling back” again in November, or ever.
During those eight months, as Osten noted, “We’re already on Atlantic Standard Time.”
Moving to Eastern time for just four months makes no sense, Osten said. “It doesn’t have any practical
effect on the times of school or jobs or commerce.”
Even if the state legislature were to pass the proposal and Gov. Ned Lamont was to sign it into law, it would not take effect until other states, including New York and Massachusetts, did the same.
Those other states have had similar proposals raised in their respective legislatures, and each bill is tied to similar bills in other states. So, Massachusetts wouldn’t move forward without Rhode Island, which wouldn’t move forward without New Hampshire, and so on.
Even then, the federal government would have to give its blessing, Vail said.
That might cause some issues, particularly for people who live in western New York state, which is north of Pennsylvania, or for people who commute from New Jersey into New York City.
But there are other oddities in the United States map of time zones. In Indiana, for example, you can drive from Central to Eastern and then back to Central without ever leaving the state. Time zones often bisect states in strange ways.
“You have to draw the line somewhere,” Vail said.
When the Massachusetts legislature debated the idea in 2017, the result was a study into the effects of Daylight Saving Time. That study showed increases in heart attacks and car accidents in the week following both time shifts in the spring and fall.
“There’s a lot of health issues with it,” Vail said. “Obviously the world doesn’t rotate differently but our bodies are programmed to this time frame.”
“There’s just no need for it anymore,” he said. “I don’t know that there ever was.”
For state Rep. Quentin Phipps, D-Middletown, the effects of Daylight Savings Time on people who suffer from mental health issues like depression are particularly resonant.
“I think this is a way to help those that suffer from seasonal affective disorder,” he said. Phipps and Vail, a liberal Democrat and a conservative Republican, “Used to sit next to each other” in the legislative chamber,” Phipps said. “We often had conversations where we saw things differently.”
But Phipps said, “this is not a partisan issue.”
Vail agreed. “We certainly disagree on lots of issues. There’s no party line on this,” he said. “There are Republicans that are against it and Democrats that are against it and vice-versa. Overall, I think the general consensus is that it just makes sense at this point.”
When the bill came to the legislature in 2019, there were objections from the sporting community, which argued vehemently against the proposal.
“Such a change would be extremely disruptive to viewers and listeners, who currently enjoy access to a mix of local and national programming which is available in the Eastern Time Zone,” according to testimony submitted to the legislature by Michael Ryan, president of the Connecticut Broadcasters Association.
Ryan wasn’t the only one. “I believe this is a completely absurd idea. What a nightmare it would be to be out of step with the rest of the Eastern Time Zone,” Jane Stephens, a resident of Bolton, told the legislature at the time. “I hope the legislature would deal with important issues facing the state and stop wasting time with ridiculous nonsense like this bill.”
Vail argues that the present situation is just as absurd: “Can you imagine if we never had daylight savings and then I proposed moving the clocks?”
Daylight Saving Time started during World War I in the United States and other countries, as a way to save energy by extending the time of day when the sun set. During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered year-round Daylight Saving Time, in effect putting the East in Atlantic time.
Neither Vail nor Phipps, both of whom expressed passion about the issue, said it was a priority, particularly this year as the state still struggles to mitigate the coronavirus pandemic and balance a budget that’s more than $1 billion per year out of whack.
“This is something that should be done but I understand if this is not a priority that we take up in the legislature at this exact moment,” Phipps said.
Vail echoed that sentiment, but in stronger terms.
“We certainly have bigger things we’re going to be focusing on this year, he said. “But as long as I’m a state Rep I will be pushing this issue.”