In February, Senate Bill (SB) 1548 which would abolish daylight savings, was introduced. This bill would have effectively removed Oregon’s daylight savings and permanently changed the state to standard time. Kim Thatcher, a Republican state senator currently serving as a member of the Oregon State Senate for the 11th district, introduced SB 1548 in order to rid Oregonians of daylight savings time.
Thatcher has worked for the state of Oregon since 2005, initially as a state representative. According to Thatcher, one of her main concerns is to address things that people in Oregon are concerned about, specifically things that she can fix. Many people have raised concerns about daylight savings, and SB 1548 is one approach she found to fixing it. Thatcher reports she receives “constant letters to get rid of daylight savings.”
The initial vote in the senate on SB 1548 came to a perfect tie, 15-15. Following the vote, Senator Thatcher switched her original “yes” vote to a “no,” changing the overall result to 14-16. Her switch put her on the prevailing side so she would be able to request the bill be reconsidered. Thatcher’s request was approved and SB 1548 was sent back to committee for amendment and reconsideration. The bill was amended with a proposal to end daylight savings, but only if and when California and Washington made the change first.
Other senators have raised issues with the bill, specifically regarding the time change with surrounding states, such as Washington. Emory Mort, the chief of staff for Oregon Senator Michael Dembrow, explained,“Senator Dembrow stated on the Senate Floor that he was concerned the bill would have people in Oregon and Washington in separate time zones for large chunks of the year… People commuting from Vancouver, WA into his district would be in one time zone, then another.”
Though perhaps annoying for commuters, Thatcher argues that there are many concerns Oregonians already have with daylight savings time, such as its impact on cardiovascular health. According to a study of hospital admissions done across the state of Michigan, there was a 24% increase in heart attacks on the following Monday after the daylight savings switch.
SB 1548 was next expected to be voted on by the House, but Oregon House Speaker Dan Reyfield’s office confirmed to KGW that the House would not vote on the bill due to insufficient time left in the session. This means SB 1548 is officially considered ‘dead’ until the next session. Mort says, “There’s a lot more discussion to be had … senators and Representatives need to continue to be in discussion with the public about how residents would like to approach the time change issue.”
Though now daylight savings is much more political, it was originally implemented under the Standard Time Act for seven months in 1918 as a wartime measure to conserve the United State’s energy resources. Local jurisdictions were allowed to choose whether to recognize daylight saving or not, until the Uniform Time Act standardized daylight saving time in 1966. In March 2022, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Sunshine Protection Act, which would make daylight savings time permanent, but the bill did not become law because the House of Representatives did not address it. This left control of daylight savings to continue as a state issue.
