Bill to make daylight saving time permanent in Iowa inches forward again

By Kathie Obradovich, Iowa Capital Dispatch

Some state lawmakers are trying again to make daylight saving time permanent in Iowa.

A three-lawmaker panel on Tuesday advanced House File 498, which states that daylight saving time would be permanent throughout the year. The bill was introduced last year but did not make it through the House State Government Committee.

Leslie Carpenter of Iowa Mental Health Advocacy was among those who spoke in favor of the bill.  “My viewpoint is I advocate for people with serious mental illness, and the time change every spring and every fall seems to produce a deterioration for many people,” she said.

Lobbyist Brad Epperly said the Iowa Broadcasters Association continues to oppose the bill, which poses challenges with broadcast schedules when neighboring states are not using the same time standard.

The discussion is almost as regular as clockwork in the Legislature. In 2022, the House passed legislation that would have made the change, but a Senate committee inserted language that would delay enactment until states bordering Iowa also made the change. Epperly said that provision addresses the challenge the broadcasters face.

Subcommittee member Rep. Heather Matson, D-Ankeny, said her concern is that Iowa could not move ahead with the change without federal approval. “I certainly appreciate the desire to not change the clock back and forth. I do have concerns over the fact that the federal government needs to approve it to even be able to move forward. And that was a big part of my hesitation last year as well,” she said.

The U.S. Senate had approved a bill in 2022 that would have ended the ritual of turning clocks back an hour in the fall and forward an hour in the spring. But the proposal went no further.

Matson declined to sign off on the bill and said she’d be more interested in it if it moved Iowa permanently to standard time instead. That change would not require federal approval, she said. Arizona and Hawaii maintain standard time all year.

Iowa is currently on standard time, which provides an extra hour of daylight in the early mornings. When daylight saving time begins in March, the change provides the extra hour of daylight in the evening.

Rep. Jacob Bossman, R-Sioux City, the subcommittee chairman, said he appreciates the effect that changing clocks has on children, special-needs adults and others. He said he prefers the proposal to keep the state on Daylight Saving instead of standard time. “I think that this is the better way of preserving more daylight. And so that’s why the bill was drafted in this way,” he said.

The proposal moves to the House State Government Committee for further debate.

— Iowa Capital Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com. Follow Iowa Capital Dispatch on Facebook and Twitter.