Technically, California Law Says Daylight Time Starts Last Sunday in April | Hacker News Reader

Technically, California Law Says Daylight Time Starts Last Sunday in April

leginfo.legislature.ca.gov

26 pointsDrScump28 comments

Federal preemption. Uniform Time Act of 1966. States can opt out of Daylight Savings Time, but can't do it differently.

Well that's downright reasonable. Bravo, 1966 federal lawmakers.

It's like they were actually trying back then.

The link shows current law in the red strikethrough type. (This particular bill, AB807, seeks to eliminate Daylight Time altogether, statewide).

I couldn't find a plain, direct reference using the broken search tools on the California Legislature official site.

Because the Daylight Saving Time Act was originally passed as an Initiative Statute (by voter petition), the Legislature can't change it without it going back before the voters in a statewide election and gaining at least a simple majority of Yes votes.

Yes it repeals the act, but it also adds a new section to the CA state code that reimplents DST there

It would do as you wrote, if it passes, is signed by the governor, and is approved by voters.

I don't know why they don't just do a clean revocation bill to fix the anachronism.

Is it a crime to not acknowledge daylight savings time? I mean it's a law so it must be... What happens if I as a person or a city or a major corporation ignore it? Do I get a fine?

If not and everyone hates it, why not just ignore it.

Without trying to sound like a crazy person, when and where did the federal government get the power to set the time? I'm genuinely curious as I know from history class time used to be a far more local construct varying for city to city.

Update: found [1] with a little bit of searching. Really interesting.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Time_Act

It's not a crime to ignore daylight savings time, that makes no sense. However, if you show up an hour late for work and get fired, or an hour late for court and get held in contempt, you're not going to have an excuse.

> when and where did the federal government get the power to set the time?

Article I Section 8 of the US Constitution lists the powers of Congress. One of the enumerated powers is to "fix the Standard of Weights and Measures".

counties in state of indiana did not always follow standard time of the state

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Indiana

Oh growing up this was fun. My neighbor school district was right on the DST / Not DST line. So half the year the entire school district was in the same time zone. Half the year they were an hour apart.

Thankfully this was mostly straightened out in the last 5 years. NW and SW corners go central, the rest go Eastern. Seems mostly more sane. I still think it would be a small benefit for the entire state to go Eastern, but I do understand why the counties very close to Chicago want to stay on the same time zone.

It's confusing. Once when I and my wife were tourists in USA, we experienced the switch to Daylight Time three times.

First in New York City where we missed our train. Then another time in Arizona. We suddenly discovered a Sunday that time was off but luckily it was of no importance. Then a last time again at home in Switzerland, where we missed again an appointment.

I am not sure about Arizona. Is it really true that states might have different daylight times?

Arizona doesn't observe daylight savings.

It's actually called "Daylight Saving Time", but it's a common mistake.

There's a funny thing about "mistakes" in language. The more common they are, the less they're mistakes.

In which region is it common to call in Daylight Time? In New York I always hear it referred to as Daylight Savings Time.

"Daylight Time"? Nowhere that I've been. Mackal said that Arizona doesn't observe "daylight savings", and Osiris corrected them with "Daylight Saving Time". That's the difference that I was referring to. I hear "daylight savings" quite often.

I copied what the article said – when in Rome do as Romans do.

Actually, the correct way to write it is "Daylight-Saving Time" [0]. I strongly suspect that had it been commonly written this way from the beginning, people would have understood how the phrase is constructed -- it means, the time that saves daylight -- and the whole "daylight savings" thing would never have gotten started. Consider that the hyphenated form also suggests a different pronunciation, with the primary stress on "day" and secondary stress on "sav", rather than the other way around which is how most people pronounce it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyphen#Compound_modifiers

You should correct the Wikipedia article[0]. The title and references within the article don't use the hyphenated version.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time

Funny you should mention! I tried [0]. (That's an old revision of the Talk page; the discussion has been removed.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Daylight_sav...

Ah, this could explain the inconsistency we experienced.

However, when at the Grand canyon in Arizona, it seems that DST does get followed. This makes it difficult if you happen, like I did, to do a trip the weekend of DST shift where you start in Phoenix, AZ, go to the Grand canyon, then proceed west into a different time zone.

No wonder we were confused. Today I googled a bit and found this tidbit on: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/03/09/ari...

«The Navajo Reservation observes daylight saving time; the Hopi Reservation does not. The Navajo Reservation surrounds the Hopi Reservation, so if on Monday you drive from Flagstaff to Gallup through Tuba City and Ganado, you'll change time on four occasions.»

Grand Canyon National Park does not observe DST either, but as another comment noted, the Navajo Nation, which makes up a large part of the northeast corner of the state of Arizona, does.

The fun one is Indiana. Most of Indiana is in the Eastern time zone, the rest is in Central. The portion in the Eastern time zone (well, most of it) used to not observe DST, while that in the Central did. In 2006, it was changed so that everybody observed DST, although there's still quite a bit of unhappiness with the status quo and it could yet change again.

There is a West Wing episode "20 Hours in America" (it's 2 parts) where some characters are left behind by the campaign motorcade and try very unsuccessfully to make their way back to Washington. One of their many false starts involves a local difference in how daylight savings time is observed. They have a volunteer drive them to one of the later campaign stops, but this county has different time and they are an hour late.

More and more lately, I think about how any future intelligent life will be looking back at how we live now and will do so with increasing disbelief the more and more they learn about us.

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