11 February 2019 — 1454 mst

Should Montana be in the same time zone as Alabama?

A Great Falls Republican, Rep. Lola Sheldon-Galloway (HD-22), wants to put that question to Montana’s voters on 3 November 2020. She’s introduced HB-430, a legislative referendum that, if approved by the voters, and then by the U.S. Department of Transportation or Congress, would transfer Montana from the Mountain to the Central Time Zone.

The effect would be year-long Daylight Saving Time. Every Montanan would be guaranteed an extra hour of daylight in the evening or late afternoon, and forever spared the indignity of having to reset clocks twice a year. On Christmas Eve, 1800 PST in Seattle would be 2000 CST in Kalispell, 380 crow miles due east, and 2000 CST in Birmingham, another 1,700 or so crow miles to the southeast. At the northern Idaho-Montana border, the time zone would jump from Pacific to Central.

Sen. John Esp’s attempt to have a referendum on ending DST, SB-153, was tabled in committee on a tie vote. He wanted to spare his constituents the terror of resetting their clocks twice a year. Now comes Sheldon-Galloway with another method of achieving that goal. Is she serious? Or does introducing HB-430 fulfill a commitment she made to someone or some organization?

All of these attacks on DST are coming from Republican legislators in central and eastern Montana, in the agricultural country where there may be more cows than people, and where resetting clocks seems to be regarded as both harder and less necessary than mentally solving differential calculus equations. Why this is so seems like a great subject for a masters thesis or doctoral dissertation in sociology or anthropology.

As for HB-430, the legislature would do Montana a great favor by seeing the light and laying the bill on the table.