Answer Woman: When is daylight saving time in North Carolina? Will it be permanent?
ASHEVILLE - Today's burning question is about the time honored tradition of daylight saving time: Why we do it, who doesn't do it and when our clocks roll back. Got a question for Answer Man or Answer Woman? Email Executive Editor Karen Chávez at KChavez@citizentimes.com and your question could appear in an upcoming column.
Question: When does daylight saving time start? Weren’t there efforts to discontinue it in North Carolina? What happened to that?
Answer: Despite legislative efforts otherwise, come November, Western North Carolina will see its clocks turned back, like always. Or, at least, as it has for decades.
The time shift, also referred to as “spring forward, fall back,” will happen at 2 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 5. For the majority of states, including North Carolina, autumn ushers in a return to standard time, with clocks set back one hour.
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Will NC make daylight saving time year-round?
As someone who has blissfully thought very little about daylight saving time, and finds getting out of bed to be difficult, regardless of the time of year, some of the contentious nature of the practice escaped me. But efforts to stop the twice-yearly clock switching, which some call "disruptive," bemoaning loss of sleep, are nothing new.
State legislatures have considered at least 450 bills and resolutions in recent years to establish year-round daylight saving time as soon as federal law allows it, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Inherent in the debate is whether to enact either permanent standard time or permanent daylight time. The federal Uniform Time Act allows the former option but not the latter.
The U.S. Senate unanimously approved a bill called the Sunshine Protection Act in 2022. Introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, the act would permanently extend daylight saving time for the entire year. However, the measure has not yet been signed into law by President Joe Biden as it hasn't yet been passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, where it was "held at the desk," according to USA TODAY reporting.
In the last five years, 19 states have enacted legislation or passed resolutions to provide for year-round daylight saving time, if Congress were to allow such a change, and in some cases, if surrounding states enact the same legislation, according to NCSL. Because federal law does not currently allow full-time DST, Congress would have to act before states could adopt changes.
N.C. House Bill 326, which would adopt DST year round, was introduced in March in the General Assembly. It passed the house in May, but stalled in the senate.
Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University, said it's not the first time the discussion has come to North Carolina's legislature.
"It’s sort of like the Olympics," he said. "Every few years someone brings up daylight savings time again.”
But most years, there's not too strong of a push. The most recent bill was a little bit different.
“It’s hard to know what the cause and the effect is," Cooper said, but it seemed to be gaining momentum. Unlike other years, when similar bills might be introduced but rarely get a hearing or vote, the 2023 proposed legislation passed the lower chamber "pretty easily."
In part, Cooper attributed it to Rep. Jason Saine, a Republican out of Lincoln County, among those who introduced the bill. With a powerful Republican as its primary sponsor, it was no surprise the bill got more attention.
Though it didn't make it through both chambers this year, he expects it will come up again, particularly as other states also push similar legislation.
“This idea is having a moment," Cooper said. "It’s being discussed at the federal level, it’s being discussed by various states. I certainly can’t predict what is going to happen with it, but I don’t think it’s going to go away anytime soon.”
When did federal time changes start?
The Standard Time Act of 1918 was the first law to implement standard and daylight saving times at the federal level.
"Federal oversight of time zones began in 1918 with the enactment of the Standard Time Act, which vested the Interstate Commerce Commission with the responsibility for establishing boundaries between the standard time zones in the U.S.," according to The U.S. Department of Transportation. "This responsibility was transferred from the Interstate Commerce Commission to DOT when Congress created DOT in 1966."
More: Daylight savings ends in November. Why is it still around?
Why?
The U.S. Department of Transportation oversees the observance of daylight saving time as well as U.S. time zones, according to transportation.gov. The DOT said energy reduction and reduced crime are reasons for having both standard and daylight saving time.
When was daylight saving time 2023?
This year's daylight saving time began at 2 a.m. Sunday, March 12.
Which states don't observe daylight saving time?
Arizona (except for the Navajo Nation) and Hawaii do not recognize daylight saving time. Neither do Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Marianas.
For more insight, I spoke with my colleague, McKenna Leavens, the Citizen Times's education reporter. She's from Arizona, one of the sole state holdouts on the issue, and said the concept was just never talked about. Though there was a vague awareness borne from summer vacations to California, she didn't have to confront the twice-yearly time changes until moving to New York City for grad school.
Upon November's "fall back," her first one, Leavens admits she did miss a class in the confusion, sitting in an apartment full of off-kilter clocks.
All in all, in a life without daylight saving time, with no point of reference, impacts were minimal. Though when reporting on the area's Navajo reservations, where DST was in effect, it sometimes meant mis-scheduled Zoom calls or minor confusion.
“This is probably the most I’ve ever talked about (daylight saving time) in my whole life,” she said of our five-minute conversation. Which is fair. This is certainly the most I’ve ever thought about it, too.
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Sarah Honosky is the city government reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA TODAY Network. News Tips? Email shonosky@citizentimes.com or message on Twitter at @slhonosky. Please support local, daily journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: When does daylight saving time in North Carolina?
