[O]n Sunday at 2 a.m., clocks will spring forward one hour, in accordance with daylight saving laws.
But one House representative hopes that someday soon, Vermont’s clocks will never have to leap forward, or fall back, again.
A bill, H.10, proposed by Rep. Sam Young, D-Greensboro would adopt daylight-saving time throughout the year and prevent the state from having to reset its clocks in the winter and fall.
Under current law, Vermont winds its clock back to Eastern Standard Time in November, which increases daylight in the morning, and moves its clocks forward to daylight saving time in March, to extend light in the evening.
But Young sees the time changes as a tradition that no longer makes sense.
“We’ve been making the standard time shorter and shorter all the time so that now it’s only four months a year,” Young said.
“It came into effect during World War I and was put in place by the Germans, so why we’re following it, I don’t know,” he said of daylight saving practices.
Young believes the state could benefit from more evening light during winter months. He argues the change could improve driving conditions, and even result in economic benefits by encouraging people to stay out and shop for longer hours.
Germany started the daylight saving time trend in 1916, during the war, in an effort to save fuel. Two years later, Europe and the United States had also adopted the system, though Congress threw it out after the war. It wasn’t until 1966, with the passage of the Uniform Time Act, that most of the country began regularly observing modern daylight saving practices.
There are only two states—Arizona, and Hawaii—that exempt themselves from daylight saving laws.
But some others including California, Massachusetts and Maine have seen recent pushes to eliminate time changes.
In 2018, Florida enacted a law, which like Young’s legislation, would allow the the state to adopt permanent daylight saving time. It will go into effect if it receives congressional approval.
If Young’s daylight saving bill became law, it would also need an OK from lawmakers in Washington before it could take effect.
But first it would need to make it out of the Statehouse, which Young doesn’t expect will happen immediately.
“It’s not going to happen this year. I look at it as a multi-year effort,” he said. “You’ve got to start the conversation somewhere.”
He said that he’s heard from Vermonters, including farmers, who want to see the change.
A common myth about daylight saving time laws is that they were supported by farmers who wanted to have more light during early morning hours.
But Young said that farmers don’t build their schedules around the time changes.
“They change their schedule according to the cows,” he said.
Joe Tisbert, the president of the Vermont Farm Bureau, said he hasn’t heard a strong consensus from farmers about Young’s proposal either way.
“I know some farmers struggle with the change and I know some farmers that are really not opinionated about it,” Tisbert said.
Ray Bates, a clockmaker in Newfane, who has owned and run The British Clockmaker, a local clock shop, for more than fifty years, said he “doesn’t care either way” about the proposal to change the state’s daylight saving practices.
He noted however, the public should have more time to weigh in on Young’s proposal.
“I think you’d have to have a consensus of the general population. I really think you’d have to get some sort of referendum,” he said.
On a personal level, though, he doesn’t see much of a reason to modify current daylight saving traditions.
“It’s just, to me, not a big deal,” he said. “But I’m just a simple country clockmaker.”
