Time in Indiana

[2] In 2005, the Indiana General Assembly reached a decision to implement daylight saving time state-wide beginning in April 2006.

Before 1883 in the United States, most towns and cities set their own local time to noon when the sun was at its highest point in the sky.

Since the sun reaches "high noon" four minutes later for every degree of longitude traveled towards the west, the time in every town was different.

[4] During World War II, daylight saving time was once again mandated by Congress to conserve energy.

However, the law had no enforcement power, and it was largely ignored by communities that wanted to observe Eastern Standard Time.

Once again, the law was not enforceable, and individual communities continued to observe whichever time zone they preferred.

§§ 260–267) to specify where and when daylight saving time was applied in the U.S., and authority was shifted to the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT).

Four years later, Starke County asked the USDOT to move it from the Central Time Zone to the Eastern Time Zone; in this case, however the USDOT did not find a sound reason for the move, and declined the request (see 46 FR 23500 and 46 FR 51786).

In 1985, the Indiana General Assembly, in Senate Concurrent Resolution 6, asked the USDOT to move five counties in southwest Indiana (Posey, Vanderburgh, Warrick, Spencer, and Gibson) from the Central Time Zone to the Eastern Time Zone.

Attitudes began to change in the 1990s, as Indiana's time zone situation was seen as impeding the state's economic growth.

The bill was also accompanied by Senate Enrolled Act 127,[6] which required Governor Daniels to seek federal hearings from the USDOT on whether to keep Indiana on Eastern Time with New York City and Ohio or whether to move the entire state back to Central Time with Chicago.

With the Eastern/Central dividing line running through the base, NSWC Crane was unable to fully comply with the realigned time zones.

This decision presented a larger regional problem, for even though NSWC Crane is Martin County's largest employer, two-thirds of the base's employees live in Greene, Lawrence, Monroe, and other Eastern Time Zone counties.

Pulaski County Commissioners and County Council both voted unanimously on February 6, 2006, to declare home rule and stay on Eastern Time if a federal agency did not grant an appeal to change the time zone ruling.

St. Joseph, Marshall, and Fulton counties overtly expressed interest in making another attempt to be changed to Central Time as of the end of 2006.

[15] Opponents of putting the entire state on one time zone often cite out-of-state cities as their reason of opposition.

Counties in the southeastern corner of the state are suburbs of cities such as Cincinnati, Ohio, and Louisville, Kentucky, which both observe Eastern Time.

[16] The confusion caused to outsiders featured prominently in the plot of an episode of The West Wing in which presidential aides unfamiliar with Indiana's non-observance of DST miss their return flight to Washington, D.C., on Air Force One and express consternation with the variances in the state's time measurement.

[17] Detractors of daylight saving time claim that scientific studies assessing the impact of the time policy change to DST in Indiana have identified a significant increase in energy usage and spending on electricity by Indiana households.

Indiana households paid an additional $8.6 million in electricity bills according to University of California, Santa Barbara economics professor Matthew Kotchen and Ph.D. student Laura Grant,[18] while supporters of Daylight Saving Time point to studies such as Professor Kotchen, the Department of Transportation and organizations such as the California Energy Commission claim that the United States saves approximately 1% of energy when Daylight Saving Time is being observed.

In the western Indiana counties where Eastern time is observed (South Bend and Lafayette south to Terre Haute and Vincennes), around the summer solstice, the sun neither sets until after 9:20 p.m., nor does it reach solar noon until almost 2:00 p.m.[20] During the winter months when standard time is observed, school buses in western regions lose a valuable hour of the sun's rays as they pick up children in the morning.

Another notable observation is that schools in the Eastern Time Zone of Indiana tend to have far more 2-hour delays, mainly due to the fact that sunlight is required for many road de-icing components to work[citation needed].

With the sun rising as late as 8:20 a.m. in some areas, available sunlight is inadequate to safely thaw the roads for school buses to pick up all their passengers on time.