Lawmaker eyes staying on daylight saving time

HARTFORD — Connecticut residents will “fall back” Sunday and gain an extra hour of sleep, but there’s a movement that seems to be gaining momentum to stay on daylight saving time.

State Rep. Kurt Vail, RStafford Springs, introduced legislation earlier this year that would have Connecticut stay on daylight saving time and switch to the Atlantic Time Zone. The legislation received a public hearing but never received a vote from the General Administration and Elections Committee.

In fact, no one but Vail submitted public testimony on the bill.

He said it was an idea that was raised by one of his constituents and the more he investigated the issue, the more he saw the benefits both to the economy and public health.

He’s not alone. A commission in Massachusetts voted Wednesday to recommend moving to year-round daylight saving time, as long as other Northeastern states joined it.

The Special Commission on the Commonwealth’s Time Zone found that ending the practice of changing the clocks twice a year in March and November could improve the economy by increasing retail sales, increasing worker productivity, reducing energy costs, lowering street crime and improving public health.

“There’s no purpose for it anymore,” Vail said Thursday in a phone interview.

He said he’s been speaking with his counterparts in Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island and New Hampshire about the legislation. Vermont is the only New England state that hasn’t weighed in on the issue.

Vail said he’s also spoken to farmers in his district and businesses and both believe it would be beneficial to have the additional hour of daylight in the afternoon.

He said he’s heard two objections to the idea over the past year. The first complaint is that schoolchildren would be waiting for the bus in the dark. That’s because the extra hour of daylight would come at the end, instead of the beginning of the day.

The Special Commission on the Commonwealth’s Time Zone suggested that the impact could be mitigated “by delaying school start-times, which is a cost-effective way to alleviate safety concerns as well as improve students’ physical and mental health, attendance and graduation rates, tardiness and dropout rates, and grades and standardized test scores.”

The second complaint is that other surrounding states would be on a different schedule

Vail said he believes they would be able to resolve the latter in the next year as the measure gained momentum and they worked with other New England states to adopt year-round daylight saving time.

He said the science is there to back up his argument. He said there’s an increase in both heart attacks and motor vehicle accidents the week after the clock changes in both March and November.

A2014 study in the journal Open Heart found an increase in heart attacks on the Monday following the switch to daylight savings time in spring. Further, a 2001 study in the Sleep Journal found an increase in motor vehicle accidents on the Monday following the spring shift and the Sunday night before the fall shift.

Daylight saving time was introduced in the United States during World War I and then abandoned until 1966, when Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, which established daylight saving time as running from the last Sunday in April until the last Sunday in October. The dates have been amended several times since 1966.

The current dates for “springing forward” and “falling back” are the second Sunday in March and the first Sunday in November. Those dates have been in place since 2007.

The Special Commission on the Commonwealth’s Time Zone found that there’s no mechanism that exists through which Massachusetts could adopt year-round daylight saving time because federal law only allows states to opt out of it.

“But the state could effectively achieve that goal by moving from the Eastern Time Zone to the Atlantic Time Zone and then opting out of DST,” according to the report.

Vail said the intention of his legislation was the same.

However, in 2018 Vail can only pitch a committee on raising the concept because individual lawmakers are only allowed to submit legislation in odd-numbered years.