Georgia Pushes to Switch Time Zones

Georgia lawmakers are trying a new route in the long-running battle over clock changes. The state Senate on Monday overwhelmingly backed a bill that would move Georgia out of the Eastern time zone and into the Atlantic time zone, effectively putting it on Atlantic Standard Time all year and ending the spring-forward/fall-back ritual, WABE reports. If Georgia moves to the Atlantic time zone, which covers parts of eastern Canada and Bermuda but no other states, it will be an hour ahead of its neighbors Florida and South Carolina from November to march but on the same time as them for the rest of the year, apart from the part of the Florida Panhandle that's in the Central time zone, the Hill reports.

House Bill 154, which passed the Senate 45–5, would have the governor ask the US Department of Transportation to approve the time-zone shift; the measure now returns to the House, which first passed it in a completely different form last year. The original bill addressed ambulance services in the state but it was completely overwritten by the Senate. The move is a workaround to bypass congressional approval: a 2021 Georgia law to adopt permanent daylight saving time is stuck until Congress repeals the Uniform Time Act of 1966, so shifting time zones would sidestep that.

Republican state Sen. Bo Hatchett, the bill's driver, cited spikes in car crashes and health problems after time changes, as well as disruptions for schools and people with autism. He says legislators in Florida and South Carolina are eyeing the same approach. Hatchett says that if the bill passes and the DOT approves, it could take time to make the change, "but there is a chance that we may never have to fall back or roll back our clocks again." "We'd get an extra hour of sunshine at the end of the day, which I think in today's economy, people are struggling, Georgians are working hard," he said, per WABE. "I'd love to give them a little bit of good news, a little bit of extra sunshine to brighten their day." (British Columbia has put its clocks back for the last time.)