My day, which wasn't going so well, in part because I'd left my iPhone at home so felt out-of-touch while grocery shopping, brightened up a lot when I returned, checked on what's happening in the world, and saw a notice from the Statesman Journal that the bill to make standard time permanent in Oregon had met a well-deserved death in the short legislative session that is wrapping up soon.
House Speaker Dan Rayfield essentially killed legislation to adopt permanent Pacific Standard Time in most of Oregon, sending the proposal to the Emergency Management, General Government and Veterans Committee with just days left in the 2024 short legislative session.
This is great news for us lovers of Daylight Saving Time, which begins next Sunday. My wife and I much prefer having an extra hour of light in the evening rather than the morning. So do most Americans, since a recent poll showed that two-thirds said they prefer daylight saving time in some form, permanent or part of the year, with just one-third preferring permanent standard time.
As I said in "Oregon needs permanent daylight saving time, not permanent standard time," this was a screwy idea by State Senator Kim Thatcher of Keizer that never should have seen the light of day.
The reason it passed the Senate on a narrow 16-14 vote is that an amendment was added requiring that the only way Oregon could move to permanent standard time is if both Washington and California do the same thing. Which makes sense, since otherwise a Vancouver resident who works in Portland would have to change their clock twice a day upon crossing the Columbia River.
Big thanks to House Speaker Dan Rayfield for saving Oregon from the nightmare of permanent standard time. I'm so grateful to him, Rayfield already has my endorsement for governor, or any other higher office he might choose to pursue, along with a $100 commitment to his campaign fund.
An Oregonian story by Lizzy Acker has more details about how House Bill 1548 met its end. The only bad news, according to the Statesman Journal story, is that Thatcher plans to reintroduce her bad idea in the 2025 legislative session.
The clock, it seems, has run out on Oregon’s chance to switch to standard time for good.
A bill that have would put Oregon on permanent standard time if Washington and California made the same switch narrowly passed the Senate on Monday. But shortly after its passage, House Speaker Dan Rayfield, a Democrat from Corvallis, consigned the bill to die.
Now, the House will not get a chance to vote on whether to end the twice-yearly time change.
“We received the bill later than we would usually take on Senate policy bills since it got referred back to committee before making it over here,” said Hazel Tylinski, a spokesperson for Rayfield. “Given the shortened timeline and the queue of critical bills we’re still working through, we aren’t able to give enough time to consider the merits of the bill in the time we have left this session.”
Senate Bill 1548 would have ended the practice of switching to daylight saving time and instead kept most of Oregon on standard time year-round.
“I like the concept that was brought forward this session and would be interested in supporting something similar in the future,” Sen. Elizabeth Steiner, a Portland area Democrat and one of the sponsors of the bill, in a statement. “This is an important change that will make a difference for not only the health and safety of Oregonians but also for people like me whose religious practices are tied to sunrise and sunset.”
Oregon passed a bill to switch to permanent daylight saving time in 2019, but that requires an act of Congress which has yet to materialize. After that effort, many groups came out against the idea of a permanent daylight saving time, noting that in the past, switches to permanent daylight saving time caused a variety of problems, including the deaths of children who were hit by vehicles on the way to school in the dark.
A change to permanent standard time requires no congressional involvement.
After Oregon senators evenly split on an earlier version of the bill in late February, changes were made to the proposal to ensure that Oregon would not switch to permanent standard time unless California and Washington also did. That version of the bill passed the Senate on a 16-14 vote Monday before Rayfield referred it to a House committee that is not scheduled to meet before the session’s required end of March 10.
A similar bill in the Washington state legislature also did not move forward this session.
And time marches on. Daylight saving time will begin at 2 a.m. on March 10.
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