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Indianapolis Star - Politics & Government July 28, 2005 Argument over DST all about the zone Central vs. Eastern provokes more debate than plan to extend daylight-saving time. By Mary Beth Schneider Kevin Johns, a financial adviser with a Downtown Indianapolis firm, is concerned neither that Indiana is going to daylight-saving time nor that Congress is poised to extend that by one month. He -- and a lot of other Hoosiers -- says he is more concerned about what time zone Indiana will be in. "To me, it's really Central versus Eastern" and not whether the clocks are turned ahead one hour each spring and back in the fall. Indiana's legislature adopted daylight-saving time this spring. Under it, Hoosiers will turn their clocks ahead in April 2006 with the rest of the nation. But under the energy bill being debated in Congress, clocks would be turned ahead starting in 2007 on the second Sunday in March, and back on the first Sunday in November. Daylight-saving time, Johns said, "makes all the sense in the world." But he'd rather see his Indianapolis office and his Noblesville home in the Central time zone, not Eastern. He likes being an hour behind when the stock markets in New York close, so he can leave work at 4 p.m. and spend more time with his family. Steve Wilson, a Paoli drive-in theater owner, agreed that the issue for him is moving to the Central time zone. "I'm not against daylight-saving time," he said. "It's the time zone." Jay Taylor, an Indianapolis attorney, also is more interested in what time zone he ends up on than he is in an extended daylight-saving time. But unlike Johns, he wants Eastern time. "The only point to me (of daylight-saving time) is having an extra hour of daylight in the evening," he said. That is lost if Indiana is on Central time, because most of the state already is on the equivalent of Central daylight-saving time each summer. Pat McDonald, a Michigan City woman who works at a Chicago advertising agency, said she lives and works in the Central time zone, with daylight-saving time. She loves it and is happy that the time change will be a month longer. "I think it's great. Anything that gives a longer day, I'm all for." Gov. Mitch Daniels, who had pushed to have the state move to daylight-saving time, said he doesn't have a view on making that time switch a month longer. His concern, he said, was in having Indiana in sync with the rest of the nation, to bolster the state's economy. "Everything else to me is secondary," he said. "I know there's data, a lot of data, that says daylight-saving time has direct energy conservation impact. But we didn't rest the case for changing here on that." The federal Department of Transportation has asked counties that want to change time zones to make a strong case in order to get a public hearing on the issue. Daniels said he didn't think the extended daylight-saving time would affect the time zone debate. "I don't think it should." But it could affect politics. If daylight-saving time is extended, Hoosiers would turn their clocks back Nov. 2, 2008 -- two days before Daniels is up for re-election.

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