Once Again, Oklahoma Is Trying To Halt The Time Change
It's hard to believe that it's been almost five full months since this kind of talk made headlines around the state. Last October, Oklahoma State Senator Blake Stephens tried to toss a Hail Mary and freeze time before "Falling Back" last November. The idea to remain on permanent Daylight Savings is a popular one, but there was one flaw in the plan... it's against the law.
Oversimplifying the situation is always good for media sensationalizing, but it also creates misinformation and invites personal opinions over to the dark side of "alternative facts." Here's the long and short of it simplified just enough to give you the full story.
Is opting for permanent Daylight Savings really illegal? No. Any state could push to do it, but congressional approval is required. So, yeah, we could switch to permanent DST if Congress would allow us to.
Alternatively, every state is free and welcome to choose whether they observe DST or not. That means we could elect to stay on standard time year-round. It's a very unpopular option as it would mean earlier sunsets in the summer... which I'm personally a fan of because there's nothing cool about daylight at 10 PM.
Permanent standard time would even lower utility bills. If we don't "Spring Forward," peak load hours would move from 2-7 PM back to 1-6 PM... If you're a Power Hours consumer, it means cooling off the house an hour earlier in the evenings on that super-cheap KWH rate. It's solid logic.
Oklahoma Representative Kevin West has proposed a bill that would put Daylight Savings to a vote of the people. It would give each citizen the option to voice and vote their personal choice on the matter... and nobody can accurately predict where that vote would go.
While we all universally agree that a time-freeze needs to happen, to not have to jump back and forth in time twice each year, we're split nearly up the middle on which point in time we should freeze on.
Our easiest option means the evenings remain short. December days would set around 5:30 PM as usual, but it would also mean July evenings would go dark by 9 PM.... but all the same, the sun would start its daily rise at 4:30 AM in the depths of summer.
The Permanent DST option would mean late winter mornings where sunrise wouldn't happen until 9 AM in the depths of December, but we would still enjoy those long summer evenings, not being forced off the lake until nearly 10 PM... if Congress would approve it... which if you're curious, they haven't approved that request to any state as of March 10, 2022.
As the legislative process to give people their vote is still in the early stages, and that vote wouldn't likely happen until November anyway, you have plenty of time to mull it over.