Daylight saving time is coming to Florida again. Will Buchanan bill make it permanent?
Several of Florida’s national lawmakers are continuing their pursuit to “lock the clock,” on the twice-a-year time change across the country.
Through the “Sunshine State Protection Act,” which Congressman Vern Buchanan and Senator Marco Rubio introduced, daylight saving time, the act of moving your clocks ahead by one hour, would remain permanently.
And it isn’t just aimed at Floridians but the entire nation.
“There are enormous health and economic benefits to making daylight saving time permanent,” Buchanan said in a news release. “Florida lawmakers have already voted to make daylight saving time permanent in my home state and Congress should pass the Sunshine Protection Act to move Florida and the rest of the country to year-round daylight saving time.”
Buchanan first introduced the legislation in 2018 and has, along with Rubio, reintroduced it to their respective chambers of Congress ahead of March 12, the date that clocks spring forward by one hour this year.
Buchanan’s House bill has 13 original cosponsors: Reps. Bill Posey (R-Fla.), Cory Mills (R-Fla.), Brian Mast (R-Fla.), Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), John Rutherford (R-Fla.), Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.), Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), James Comer (R-Ky.), Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.), Dale Strong (R-Ala.), Nancy Mace (R-SC), Jerry Carl (R-Ala.) and Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.).
In 2018, Florida lawmakers agreed with Buchanan. The Florida Legislature passed the “Sunshine Protection Act,” but the permanent change to daylight saving time hasn’t happened.
Why?
Because the Uniform Time Act of 1966 dictates U.S. Congress must approve the change for it to be enacted in Florida.
In 2021, U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Longboat Key — whose congressional district represents Manatee County and parts of Hillsborough County — introduced House Resolution 69, also called the Sunshine Protection Act of 2021.
The legislation said: “This bill makes daylight savings time the new, permanent standard time. States with areas exempt from daylight savings time may choose the standard time for those areas.”
Florida’s two senators, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, advocated for the Sunshine Protection Act of 2021 through S.623, a bill Rubio introduced last March with Scott as one of 14 co-sponsors. It included bipartisan support.
However, neither bill passed through the House or the Senate, leaving Floridians like those in 48 other states with the need to push the clocks back in November, keeping the March 12 spring-ahead time change.
Hawaii and most of Arizona are on standard time year-round.
Origins and opposition to Daylight Saving Time
One of America’s founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, is often credited with the daylight saving time idea. Franklin wrote a 1784 essay about it as a way to conserve the need for lamp oil, while New Zealand entomologist George Hudson came up with the modern-day concept in 1895, so he had more daylight to look for bugs.
But the idea didn’t gain traction among U.S. lawmakers until World War I, and then in World War II as a wartime measure. The Uniform Time Act in 1966 made the change in time an annual passage throughout the country.
And while proponents want to stop changing the clocks twice a year, opponents — including parents and teachers — argue that a permanent daylight saving time means darker mornings and increased safety risks for children heading to school, whether it’s new teen drivers on the road or students walking to a bus stop or nearby school.
