Texas lawmakers have disagreed for years over whether and how to abolish the unpopular semiannual clock change in the state, but a bill that is on its way to the governor will finally bring an end to that debate — if Congress also acts.
House Bill 1393 by Conroe Republican Rep. Will Metcalf would establish “Texas Time,” or permanent daylight saving time in the state, if federal lawmakers later allow states to do so.
“Right now, the federal government does not allow the states to make this change, so this is effectively a trigger bill,” said Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, who sponsored the bill in the upper chamber.
Under the federal Uniform Time Act of 1966, states may not currently adopt permanent daylight saving time, but they can opt out of time changes by sticking with standard time year-round. That’s how states like Arizona and Hawaii can keep from changing their clocks twice a year.
Texas joins 18 other states that have passed similar permanent daylight saving time measures, and there’s interest at the federal level in allowing the change.
Look, I’m a lifelong defender of the current system, but I’m not going to try to dissuade you if you hate the time changes. But if we are going to get away from that – maybe, someday, if federal law changes – can we at least agree that permanent standard time is what makes the most sense? Because right now what the Lege has done is move Texas out of Central time and into Eastern time. You do know that Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama are all in Central time, right? That means we could have a situation where you drive west from Florida and you go from Eastern time to Central time and then back again to Eastern time. Hell, if say Mississippi gets the bright idea to do what we just did, you could go Eastern-Central-Eastern-Central-Eastern, all in the space of a day’s drive.
And then there’s that small piece of Texas near and including El Paso that’s now on Mountain time. What happens to it? Does it move to Central time, or does it become like the rest of the state and join Eastern time. If the latter, then every border crossing into New Mexico is now a two-hour time change; if the former, it’s for crossings that emanate from places like Odessa and Lubbock and Abilene. And now going north into Oklahoma is also a time change. How does any of this make sense?
Like I said, maybe none of this ever happens. Or maybe, if we do insist on killing DST federally, the mandate is that we just stay in the standard time of the time zone we’re now in. That would at least be reasonable, even if I hated it. But this? This is chaos, and the reason why the world adopted standard time zones in the first place. Only in Texas, I swear to God. The Barbed Wire has more.
JFC. What is wrong with these people? I guess when you don’t care about your constituents , you get this stupidity. Gulf of America, Texas strip steak, or whatever that stupidity was. Elect stupid people get stupid results. What a bunch of frauds.
I never understood why we now still officially change the time. The government and businesses already set their own working hours. They can change hours anytime it benefits them.