Large majorities of Alaskans tell pollsters they’re sick of changing their clocks twice a year. And for years, lawmakers have introduced bills that would stop us from springing forward and falling back.
This year is no exception. But the thornier question is, what time should it be?
In some sense, it’s principle versus pragmatism. Nature versus industry. Early birds versus night owls.
The one thing three quarters of Alaskans seem to agree on, said Eagle River Republican Sen. Kelly Merrick, is that it should be one or the other.
“What they're telling us is simple,” she told the House State Affairs Committee on Saturday. “They're tired of changing the clocks.”
Merrick is the prime sponsor of Senate Bill 26, passed by the state Senate last year, which would petition the federal government to move Alaska to Pacific Standard Time year-round. That would effectively lock in daylight saving time for Alaska.
Simply put, one day, we’d spring forward, and never fall back.
Merrick’s camp is for the pragmatists. She said permanent standard time would leave Alaska too far behind the rest of the country.
“There are real concerns,” she said. “Concerns about falling out of sync with the rest of the country, about being five hours behind the East Coast and two hours behind the West Coast, concerns that affect commerce, travel and communication.”
The travel industry and communities that rely on it broadly support the idea — especially the many flightseeing outfits who require daylight to run their tours. Craig Jennison with Ketchikan-based Temsco Helicopters said later evening light allows for more tours in the evening.
“It's not just flight operations, but all tours that rely on daylight,” he said. “It's really hard to show off Alaska at night.”
Now might be the time to make it happen, Merrick said. Gov. Mike Dunleavy cosponsored a similar bill a decade ago. (His office did not respond to an email seeking an update.) And, sure, it would take a move by the U.S. Department of Transportation, which controls time zones, to actually make it happen — but Merrick said she’s optimistic the Trump administration would act.
“Is it 100% sure that DOT will approve it? No, but I think if there's a time that DOT (would), it's now,” she said.
So, that’s the case for permanent daylight time.
In the opposite corner is Anchorage independent Rep. Ky Holland.
“Nothing we do here will change the number of hours in a day,” he said. “We cannot legislate the sun to rise early or set later.”
Holland is behind a competing bill, House Bill 229, that would move the state to permanent standard time. We’d fall back, and then never again spring forward.
One argument for standard time, he said, is that it would require no federal action: The Uniform Time Act of 1966 allows states to opt out of daylight saving time. Hawaii and Arizona already do.
And sure, every summer, we’d be five hours behind the East Coast — but Alaska’s unique position on the globe is its own advantage, Holland said.
“From here, within a single work day, we can engage with Europe in the morning, the Americas during the day, and East Asia in the afternoon,” he said.
Alaska Standard Time is already about an hour behind the sun — in Anchorage, the sun peaks around 1 p.m., rather than at noon. In Unalaska, the sun peaks around 2 p.m. So moving to permanent daylight time would shift midwinter sunrises to after 11 a.m. in Anchorage and close to noon in Fairbanks.
North Pole resident Cam Webb told the committee he didn’t want to spend an extra month driving to work in the dark.
“It would have us live our lives permanently, two hours out of sync with the sun and the stars. This choice represents yet another salvo in the ongoing divorce by tech obsessed humans from the natural world.
There are also health effects to consider.
Physician assistant Lisa Alexia told the committee permanent daylight saving time would throw off our bodies’ natural rhythms based around the rising and setting sun. And that would have all kinds of ill effects on everything from mental health to student achievement, she said.
“People think they want longer evenings, like they want to smoke, skip vaccines and skip wearing a seat belt,” she said. “But there are public health and public safety and education issues at stake here.”
A long list of medical groups back the health benefits of standard time’s closer alignment to the sun.
Others argued a number of places have tried permanent daylight time before — in Russia, the U.K., Portugal, even the U.S. for a year in the mid-1970s. All eventually switched back.
Whether this is the year for a solution to the problem is unclear. Merrick’s permanent daylight bill passed the Senate last year but has not yet advanced in the House. Holland’s permanent standard time bill remains in its first House committee.
