Bill to stop clocks from changing isn't ready for prime time, Senate committee decides
The clock approaches midnight at the Capitol in Salt Lake City on the last night of the legislative session, Friday, March 1, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
After some tight votes in the House, the time has come for a bill that would have stopped clocks in Utah from changing twice a year.
As members of the public gathered in a Senate committee room to speak on the perks of sunlight during the summer, or the burden of the schedule change for their kids with disabilities, senators already knew the legislation would be coming off the clock this year.
Rep. Joseph Elison, R-Toquerville sponsored HB120, the bill that would stop the switch from standard time to daylight saving. He reiterated Wednesday that his proposal wouldn't be the final answer to the debate over which time is best to keep.
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But, for most members of the Senate Business and Labor Committee, without a decision from the federal government on a single accepted time zone, the bill wasn't ready for prime time. The committee voted 7-1 to hold the bill, making it highly unlikely to return to lawmakers' calendars this year.
'I think the problem with bringing this bill back every year is we give some people hope only to steal it from them, snatch it away from them (…) when nothing changes,' Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross, who made the motion to table the legislation, told his colleagues.
Stopping Utah clocks from changing isn't a partisan issue, House vote reveals
Many of Elison's constituents contacted him with the same concern, he said — they are 'sick and tired of moving their clocks back and forth.' And, without congressional approval, the only option to change that is for the state to adopt standard time year round.
If HB120 had passed, the Legislature would have also honored a 2020 bill sponsored by Sen. Wayne Harper, R-Taylorsville, which authorized Utah to observe daylight saving time all year if Congress approved federal legislation allowing it, or if other states surrounding Utah had similar laws.
'I'm OK with the will of the body,' Elison told the committee. 'And I'm grateful to represent citizens in the state of Utah. And I simply brought this bill because I want to represent those 80% that have been asking year after year. I don't think this is going away, Sen. Weiler. I think it's going to be coming back over and over until we finally do something.'
Elison, however, was pressed on the statistics he quoted during his presentation, including that not changing clocks has 80% support, which, he later explained, he got from adding data from different polls across the country.
Representatives of the Utah Farm Bureau, along with different industries, including golf and construction, opposed the legislation as well, arguing that shorter summer days would affect their work.
'I am a part-time farmer. I don't necessarily want to be a lobbyist, but we don't have a big enough farm for us all to farm. So if I'm going to get my farm work done, much of it is done later in the evening. I appreciate that extra light to get that done. And we have a vast majority of Utahns that are unfortunately in my situation,' said Wade Garrett, from the Utah Farm Bureau.
But, this is an issue that has split lawmakers and other Utahns, regardless of their political beliefs, since many families experience substantial hassles when the clocks change.
Stacy Muhlestein, a Monticello resident who was invited by Elison to speak on the bill, said that for families with young children, neurodiverse family members or unique medical needs, the act of changing the time affects a lot more than just one hour of sleep.
'It causes weeks of upheaval, with many nights of repetitive sleep loss. For those of us with autistic children, we deal with more severe meltdowns and behaviors in the weeks following the time change due to the unnecessary disruptions in their sleep schedule and routine,' Muhlestein said. 'These unseen negative effects from the constantly changing of the time are quietly suffered in our most vulnerable households by our most heavily burdened caregivers.'
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