Lawmakers are considering a bill that exempts South Dakota from observing daylight savings time. Rep. Lana Greenfield of Doland says the original concept of resetting clocks forward an hour in the spring and back an hour in the fall was sold as an energy saver. It also promoted more outdoor activity in the evening and allowed farmers to work in the field longer. Greenfield says, that’s no longer the case today.
“Let’s take a look at today, does daylight savings time save energy? The answer is no. Reason for that, we now have air conditioner that run 24 hours a day so that is not an energy saving, we have our TV’s going and technological devices and computers. So, as people we are not interested in saving energy anymore. The second argument people would have more opportunity for outdoor actives but now things have changed and we have stadium lights for baseball and softball and indoor lighting for sports inside in ac in the summer and the third argument is farmers needing longer hours and that is no longer in affect. Many of you are farmers and you know your equipmentmen is state of the art, it now becomes inherit that we choose 1 time and stay with it.”
Mike Shaw with the Motion Picture Association of America spoke against the bill, saying it will negatively impact television viewing for South Dakotans.
“Doing this would put our residents out of step with rest of the states that observe daylight savings time in the central time zone. This is because the broadcasting and network and later programming one hour later in SD than residents have come to expect and long airing habits will be disrupted, they will have to wait a loner longer and may not be able to do this or may not want to stay up that late and will lose sleep as a result.”
Lawmakers amended the measure to make daylight savings time permanent. It was then approved for further discussion on the house floor. To stay up to date on HB 1085 or any other bill, you can find it at sd.net.