Actually this
question is very
pertinent right now.
You see, a group calling itself "
The Hoosier Daylight Coalition" has formed. Supposedly this group is composed primarily of
high tech companies, and has managed to get quite a bit of local press recently. The Coalition's goal is to
lobby the
legislature of
Indiana to, (you guessed it) adopt
daylight savings time.
Well, it is not quite as simple as that.
Indiana stradles the
Eastern Time Zone and the
Central Time Zone. Right now there are five
counties near
Chicago, and five
counties near
Evansville that observe
Central Daylight Time. There are also two
counties near
Cincinnati and three
counties near
Louisville that observe
Eastern Daylight Time. The remainder of the state (seventy seven counties) are on
Eastern Standard Time all year long.
The proposed legislation would require all the counties that are currently on
EST to adopt
EDT. This would leave the counties near
Chicago and
Evansville on
CDT and the remainder of the state on
EDT.
Yours truly does not expect this
legislation to pass. Although
The Hoosier Daylight Coalition may say, and I quote, "a vocal minority has persuaded lawmakers to resist the change (in the past)." From my personal experience this is not the case. Everyone I know (save those from
chicagoland) finds the idea of changing their clocks twice a year to "gain an hour" not only foreign but extremely suspect. (
Hoosier thinks to himself/herself: "now I know I can't actualy gain an hour... what kinda con job is this?") Of course this is not enough to stop the legislation. It will take the
Indiana Farm Bureau (a farming lobby group which is extremely powerful in an agricultural state such as Indiana) to stop it. They have already stated their intent to do so.