Permanent Daylight Saving Time Moves Ahead: What MD Is Doing

MARYLAND — As Maryland lawmakers consider making daylight saving time permanent, a Congressional measure to keep it year-round starting in 2023 cleared a major hurdle Tuesday with a unanimous vote in the U.S. Senate to send the measure to the House of Representatives.

There’s no assurance the House will take up the Sunshine Protection Act, but the Senate vote reflects growing pressure from states to end the twice-a-year “spring forward, fall back” ritual. Most states have some sort of legislation on the matter.

QUOTES FROM CONGRESSIONAL REPS

The Maryland House of Delegates approved HB126, which would keep daylight saving time permanent, on Feb. 17. Lawmaker Brian Crosby, who has pushed for the legislation, said ending the biannual clock-change will "keep our circadian rhythms healthy, lower crime, and help small businesses. I look forward to seeing this bill pass in the Senate."

The bill, if approved by the state Senate, would make daylight saving time permanent only when all Maryland's neighboring states enact the same legislation and the federal government adopts the measure, WTOP reported.

Senate sponsor Sen. Justin D. Ready told The Washington Post that after two long pandemic winters an extra hour of sunlight in the afternoon year-round will appeal to other lawmakers.

"People are tired of the tyranny of getting out of work and it's dark outside," Ready told the newspaper. "Shouldn't we keep the daylight mostly when people can actually enjoy it?"

Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican and the chief sponsor of the bill, said in remarks on the Senate floor "it's an idea whose time has come.”

"You'll see it's an eclectic collection of members of the United States Senate in favor of what we've just done here in the Senate, and that's to pass a bill to make daylight savings time permanent," Rubio said in remarks on the Senate floor. “Just this past weekend, we all went through that biannual ritual of changing the clock back and forth and the disruption that comes with it. And one has to ask themselves after a while, why do we keep doing it?”

Daylight saving time is observed across the United States, except in Hawaii and most of Arizona, which opted out of the Uniform Time Act of 1966, which mandated daylight saving time.

In Arizona, where the temperature can routinely reach a scorching 115 degrees, it’s a matter of retaining earlier sunsets and cooler evening temperatures. But the decision not to participate in the time adjustment isn’t universal in Arizona. Daylight saving time is observed on the Navajo Reservation, which surrounds the Hopi Reservation, which doesn’t.

Because Hawaii is far south of mainland states, with a latitude similar to Mexico City's, lawmakers there haven’t seen the need to increase the hours of daylight. The U.S. territories of American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands also don’t observe daylight saving time.

At least 22 states have introduced legislation this year to switch to year-round daylight saving time, year-round standard time or allow voters to decide the issue, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Another 18 have trigger laws on the books that would take effect if Congress were to allow such a change.

Daylight saving time has been around since World War I. But it became the law of the land more than 50 years ago with the Uniform Time Act of 1966, though the exact dates — now the second Sunday in March and the first Sunday in November — have changed some over the years.

Who really benefits from the time change?

Proponents may argue that longer evenings motivate people to get out of the house. The extra hour of daylight can be used for outdoor recreation such as golf, soccer, baseball, running and more. It also benefits the tourism industry.

However, critics say the drawbacks outweigh the benefits. The time change can mess with our body clocks and circadian rhythms, making for some restless nights and sleepy days. It also is difficult to quantify the economic cost of the collective tiredness caused by daylight saving time, but studies have found a decrease in productivity after the spring transition.