Washington continues to await answers on Daylight Saving Time as momentum builds in Congress
Mar 1, 2022, 2:33 PM | Updated: Mar 2, 2022, 7:53 am
(Getty Images)
(Getty Images)
Washington has been waiting on approval from Congress to remain in permanent Daylight Saving Time for nearly three years. Next week, a U.S. House subcommittee will be hosting a panel of experts to discuss the impact of ending the nation’s twice-yearly time change.
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In order to stay in Daylight Saving Time, states either need a federal waiver from Congress or approval from the U.S. Department of Transportation. Staying in standard time, though, requires no such approval, and can be implemented immediately at the state level.
Washington lawmakers passed a bill in 2019 to keep the state in Daylight Saving Time year round, and has been awaiting federal approval with little to no movement ever since. And while a House Consumer Protection and Commerce subcommittee meeting set for Wednesday, March 9, won’t specifically address Washington’s situation, more momentum appears to be building in Congress toward addressing Daylight Saving Time on a larger scale.
“Twice a year, in the spring and fall, people across the nation adjust their clocks and modify their schedules to adjust to the new time,” Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) said in a joint news release. “Historians will provide all sorts of justifications for why we do this, but increasingly our changing of the clocks twice a year is getting harder to explain.”
Washington looks for ‘alternative’ paths to end years-long wait for permanent DST
The subcommittee’s meeting will have experts weigh in on the “impacts of springing forward and falling back, and whether it still makes sense in our modern times.” Supporters of permanent Daylight Saving Time in the past have touted the advantages of later sunsets year-round, while standard time proponents point to a relative consensus among the scientific community that argues against keeping the population in summertime hours.
In Washington, a bill that would have kept the state in standard time year round failed to make headway during the 2022 legislative session. Meanwhile, Washington Sen. Patty Murray vowed in previous months that she would be “vigorously pursuing a potential workaround” to have the U.S. Department of Transportation grant the state its long-awaited waiver.
