Tired of Daylight Saving Time? Call your Congressman

THE WOODLANDS, TX – Welcome to March, home month of the shift from winter to spring, the first of two equinoxes of the year, and the ostentatious onset of Daylight Saving Time. Love it or hate it (most of us fall in the latter camp), this Sunday morning at 2:00 a.m. – also known as “two hours past midnight when you go to bed Saturday night” – our clocks will skip ahead an hour, effectively immediately wiping out everything between 2:01 and 2:59 a.m. and settling directly onto 3 o’clock.

Once again, we enter the “spring forward” season by losing an hour despite state-level legislation banning the practice. In June of last year, Governor Abbott signed House Bill 1393, aiming to establish a permanent daylight saving time in Texas, under the name ‘Texas Time.’

Despite the signing, the bill won’t take effect unless or until the United States Congress passes legislation authorizing states to observe a year-round daylight saving time, necessary because the 1966 Uniform Time Act currently prohibits states from adopting permanent DST, though it allows them to opt out entirely (as Arizona and Hawaii do).

And we’re not alone in the Lone Star State to want the government to pick a time and stick with it; Texas joins at least 18 other states that have passed similar ‘trigger laws,’ awaiting federal action. A federal bill, the Sunshine Protection Act, has been reintroduced multiple times to allow permanent daylight saving time nationwide but has not yet passed Congress.

As of now, Texans must still change their clocks twice a year, and no change will occur without federal intervention. Though it’s too late to make it an issue in the primary elections, Woodlands Online might ask the congressional candidates in the general election their stances on getting rid of biannual time shifts.

As we ‘spring forward’ this weekend, remember that all of your ‘smart’ devices should change times automatically, but manually operated clocks like on your microwave oven or prehistoric clock radio will have to be updated by hand. Also, come Monday morning on March 9, drink an extra cup of coffee and keep a keener eye out on other bleary-eyed drivers who might have difficulty making immediate adjustment to the change as the sun rises later.