A Spokane Valley legislator is taking another run at eliminating the twice-yearly ritual of changing our clocks.
Republican Senator Mike Padden proposes to move Washington to year-round standard time.
“People are, I think, tired of the tedious switching back and forth twice a year on the time,” he said.
In 2019, Padden supported a bill signed by Democratic Governor Jay Inslee that would have put Washington permanently in daylight saving Time. But that requires approval from Congress and while the Senate unanimously approved a bill to install daylight time in 2022, the House never acted on it.
Padden has tired of waiting. He says he would prefer daylight time. But, most of all, he wants time that doesn’t change in March and November and moving to standard time is something the state can do unilaterally.
“I’m working with colleagues in Oregon and California and they’re going to be trying to get similar legislation through their states so that the Pacific time zone, hopefully, could be all together on this,” he said.
Other state legislatures have also approved measures to eliminate time shifts.
The bill Inslee signed in 2019 was sponsored by Rep. Marcus Riccelli (D-Spokane). At that time, many proponents touted the health benefits of more daylight in the afternoon.
“What I like about daylight saving time is, I’m a soccer coach and more people would recreate in the evening when it’s lighter later,” Riccelli said.
But, since then, some sleep researchers and other medical people have offered a different opinion. They say our circadian rhythms are more in tune with standard time, where it’s lighter earlier and darker later.
Riccelli isn’t involved with this bill, but says he’ll look closely at anything that eliminates the time change.
“Whatever we go to, switching the clock is what increases cardiac arrests, strokes, traffic collisions,” he said.
Padden’s bill is co-sponsored by Seattle Democratic Senator Manka Dhingra.
