Could Ohio abandon daylight saving and observe standard time permanently?
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — While clocks are skipping an hour this weekend, advocates say Ohio should abandon daylight saving time and observe standard time permanently.
Daylight saving begins at 2 a.m. on Sunday, beginning the annual nine-month period when U.S. clocks “spring forward” an hour in March and “fall back” in November. Yes, this means we lose an hour of sleep this weekend when the clock skips from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m.
Jay Pea, president of the nonprofit Save Standard Time, advocates for extending standard time to the entire year and testified at the Ohio Statehouse last fall against a bipartisan resolution passed by the House of Representatives that urges the U.S. Congress to pass the “Sunshine Protection Act,” a bill to transition to perpetual daylight saving nationwide.
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Pea said perpetual daylight saving would delay Ohio’s sunrise past 8 a.m. for more than four months, sometimes as late as 9:06 a.m., and noted Ohio rejected an effort in 1974 to enact daylight saving permanently.
“Permanent standard time would protect start times for schoolchildren and essential workers by letting most sleep naturally past dawn year-round,” Pea said. “Standard time is the natural clock, set to the sun.”
Enacting daylight saving in Ohio would be curtailed until federal law changes, while switching to standard time would not. Under the Uniform Time Act of 1966, states can change to standard time but not daylight saving, which requires a change to federal law to transition to perpetual daylight saving.
Michael Garrahan, a Save Standard Time board member, also submitted testimony against the Ohio House’s resolution and argued permanent daylight saving would be harmful to the health and safety of residents. Garrahan said darker winter mornings would have an adverse effect of students unless schools alter their schedules.
“Rather than impose this burden on school districts just to maintain their present level of safety, health, and academic performance, it would be better to keep standard time so that a schedule change can improve conditions,” Garrahan said.
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However, Rep. Sean Brennan (D-Parma), a sponsor of the House’s resolution, said now is the time to reconsider the relevance of the biannual change, given studies show the time shift disrupts biological clocks and sleeping patterns. Brennan cited a 2015 study from the Journal of Critical Sleep Medicine that found during school days after the time change, students were sleepier, had slower reactional times and were less attentive.
“As a public school teacher for three decades, I can confirm these findings,” Brennan said. “By maintaining consistent time throughout the year, we can promote better sleep, overall health, safety and student productivity.”
Passing the Sunshine Protection Act would mean later sunsets in the winter, but also later sunrises. For example, the sun rises around 7:15 a.m. and sets around 4:30 p.m. on the first day of winter in New York. The Sunshine Protection Act would change sunrise to 8:15 a.m. and sunset to 5:30 p.m.
While many other states have also hinted at permanently observing daylight saving, states like Colorado, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania want to observe standard time. As the rest of the U.S. switches to daylight saving, two states change time zones. Arizona shifts from the Pacific Time Zone to the Mountain Time Zone, and Hawaii from five hours behind Eastern Time to six hours behind.
Six in 10 Americans, 61%, would do away with the nation’s twice-a-year time change while a little over one-third, 35%, want to keep the current practice, according to a Monmouth University poll.
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