FRANKFORT, Ky. — As we get ready to “spring forward” with the annual change to daylight saving time this weekend, a Northern Kentucky lawmaker is sponsoring legislation that would forever end the ritual of changing clocks twice a year.
State Rep. Steven Doan, R-Erlanger, has introduced House Bill 674, which would keep Kentucky on permanent standard time, in both the Eastern and Central time zones in the state.
Doan says he is an early-morning riser and that one of the things he likes the least is when you don’t have the early morning sunlight.
“I’ve kind of gone down the rabbit hole on this issue,” he said. “A New England Journal of Medicine shows that there was a 24 percent increase in heart attacks during that leap forward in time. That’s one thing I felt was a public health concern, and maybe we should look at some options, so we get away from that.”
Doan added, “This change is the only one that is available to the state. Either we keep doing the hour change or we can adopt permanent standard time. Under federal law, permanent daylight saving time is not available to us, so these are the two options that we’re stuck with.”
He noted, “There are only two states that are currently on permanent standard time, Arizona and Hawaii. I imagine it would work like in those two states.”
In the U.S., daylight saving time starts on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November, with the time changes taking place at 2 a.m. local time. Clocks “spring forward, fall back.” That means in springtime the clocks are moved forward from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. and in fall they are moved back from 2 a.m. to 1 a.m. Daylight saving time lasts for a total of 34 weeks (238 days) every year, about 65% of the entire year.
In 2022, the U.S Senate passed legislation permanently activating daylight saving time, but the House did not approve it.
Under Doan’s bill, permanent standard time would take effect on Nov. 1. The measure has not yet been assigned to a committee.
This story is republished with permission from Kentucky Today. Read the original.
Tom Latek has been the Frankfort correspondent for Kentucky Today, the online news website of the Kentucky Baptist Convention, since 2016. Previously, he covered news for radio and television stations in Frankfort, Lexington, and Louisville.
