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Eastern vs. Central? As long as it's Indy time Journal and Courier Staff Reports Forget about New York time and Chicago time. What's most important in a time zone fight unexpectedly laid at the feet of individual Indiana counties is that Greater Lafayette remains tied to Indianapolis time. No doubt about it, the legislature and Gov. Mitch Daniels badly misjudged the ball on Indiana's time zones. They didn't mess up by putting the state on daylight-saving time, starting next April. Indiana was long overdue to join 47 other states that change their clocks by an hour each fall and spring. But to squeeze the controversial measure through a contentious General Assembly, the governor was willing to separate daylight-saving time from one fundamental question: Do you want to be on Eastern time or Central time? In a state that has essentially split time between the two, it was an important distinction. To get the legislature to concentrate on the merits of daylight-saving time, the governor promised hearings later to decide time zones. Bad move. The problem? The U.S. Department of Transportation, in charge of setting time zone boundaries, now tells the governor that as far as it's concerned the time zones are set, with the majority of the state on Eastern time. The federal agency isn't interested in hearings unless individual counties request moving from Eastern time to Central time, or vice versa. Tippecanoe County is close enough to the Illinois border and the Central time line that our county commissioners are being shoved into the game. A week after the transportation department's announcement, commissioners here say they are still polling folks about whether they like New York time or Chicago time best. The reasons to like and dislike aspects of both time zones -- dark school bus stops in the winter vs. difficult bedtimes in the summer, for example -- are plenty and highly personal. The preferences for either Central or Eastern can be so personal, in fact, that they can seem almost petty to say out loud. At the heart of the daylight-saving debate were business concerns about being on pace with the rest of the United States. Constantly explaining away questions about what time it is in Indiana was not merely embarrassing, it was enough of a confusion that it inhibited the course of the business day. But remember that some of the muscle behind various daylight-saving time pushes in Indiana -- and there have been dozens through the decades -- came from the golf industry, the tourism industry, even groups advocating barbecuing. Give us an extra hour of sunlight at the end of the day, and our avocations will be enhanced. So what will it be: Eastern or Central? While we're confident that Hoosiers will adjust to either one, the main criteria for Tippecanoe County is to maintain the same time as Indianapolis. If that means Eastern Daylight Time -- Marion County doesn't seem eager to ask for a change -- we'll get used to it, too.

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