COLUMN: Jim Brunelle

Running for daylight

Copyright © 2005 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

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Good old Congress. Given the chance to do something significant and tough in dealing with a massive problem facing the nation, it will choose to do something symbolic and easy every time.

For example, when House and Senate conferees got together recently to reconcile differing energy bills passed by the two chambers, they tossed out a provision to increase fuel-mileage standards for new cars and trucks over the next five years but left in a provision to extend daylight-saving time by four weeks each year.

Raising standards could have saved an estimated 600,000 barrels of oil a day, whereas adding a month's worth of daylight-saving time will save maybe 100,000.

That is partly a consequence of political priorities; but also, in a strange way, it is a testament to the faith lawmakers have long had in the magical qualities of tinkering with time.

"The beauty of daylight-saving time is that it just makes everyone feel sunnier," gushed Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., author of the latest proposal.

A true believer, he has been crusading for such an extension for the better part of two decades.

If his provision stays in the energy bill and survives a presidential veto -- the Bush administration opposes the change -- it will add a week of evening daylight time to the calendar in the spring and three weeks in the fall. Markey calls it "a huge victory for sunshine lovers."

Not everybody is convinced. Midwest farmers have long resisted time changes because dairy cows and other farm animals find it hard to adjust their inner clocks when the rest of us spring forward and fall back.

The airlines also do not like the idea because it means disruptions for them, particularly in overseas schedules. Or, as Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman put it more bureaucratically, the change would "raise serious international harmonization problems for the transportation industry."

Proponents argue that, among other things, more daylight toward the end of the day results in less crime and fewer accidents. They cite studies to prove it.

The idea has the support of organizations ranging from the National Association of Convenience Stores to the Retinitis Pigmentosa Foundation Fighting Blindness -- really -- while parents of young children seem conflicted. Some like the idea of their kids spending more evening hours playing outside rather than being parked before TV sets, but others don't like the idea of sending youngsters off to school in the morning darkness.

Markey was not the only New Englander to tout the benefits of extending daylight-saving time back in the 1980s. Former Maine Sen. George J. Mitchell also promoted the idea.

As an editorial writer for the Portland Newspapers back then, I was once assigned to write something in support of Mitchell's plan. Somehow I managed to conclude from reading a news release put out by the senator's office that his bill would actually add an extra hour of daylight at both ends of the day. Naturally, I included that notion in the editorial as part of the paper's argument in favor of the scheme.

A couple of days later, we got a polite letter to the editor from a reader saying that, while he would never question the validity of our research, he just could not figure out how changing a clock setting would give us extra daylight simultaneously at morning and evening.

The following day we ran a "clarification" admitting our own puzzlement. It was one of those times I was grateful that editorial writing is an anonymous occupation.

Tinkering with time, incidentally, is not exclusively a congressional pursuit. State legislators often try their hand at it, weighing in with various schemes designed to complicate an otherwise simple system.

Six years ago, two contrary bills were introduced in the Maine Legislature, one "an act to repeal observation of daylight-saving time" and the other "an act to observe daylight-saving time year-round." Mercifully, both were consigned to the legislative trash heap.

The same fate confronted a bill filed earlier this year to move Maine into a new time zone altogether. Its sponsor argued that a shift from Eastern Time to Atlantic Time would reduce power costs and make winters here a little less gloomy. Others questioned the practicality of cutting the state off from the rest of the nation, time-zonewise, even for such lofty purposes.

Anyway, to get back to the original point, it seems that Congress has decided to deal with the energy problem by buying time. It has, quite literally, put a little daylight between itself and this vexing issue.

Jim Brunelle of Cape Elizabeth has commented on Maine issues for more than 40 years. He can be reached at jbrune@maine.rr.com.