Had A Rough Spring Forward? A Former State Senator Wants To End Daylight Saving Time Changes For Good

<p>Dave LeMote uses an allen wrench to adjust hands on a stainless steel tower clock at Electric Time Company, Inc. in Medfield, Mass., Friday, March 7, 2014. </p>
Photo: Clock, daylight savings time
Dave LeMote uses an allen wrench to adjust hands on a stainless steel tower clock at Electric Time Company, Inc. in Medfield, Mass., Friday, March 7, 2014.

A former state senator says “the time is right” to end daylight saving time changes for Colorado.

Greg Brophy has started the process to get a measure on the 2020 ballot that would keep the state on daylight saving, or summer time all year round.

“Everybody who has little kids knows it's just such a pain because it throws their schedule off kilter and they're grouchy and it’s hard to get everybody out the door to school and to work the [week] after the spring time change,” Brophy said Monday. “It just doesn't seem to me that it does anybody any good.”

This isn’t the first time Brophy has tried to keep the state’s clocks from changing. He introduced similar bills to the Colorado Senate in 2011 and 2013. This time, he is hoping Colorado voters will act.

Brophy said the whole idea came from a Facebook post. In 2010, he wrote a status update complaining about the time change and got so many responses he decided to try to change things.

The latest measure’s language is being reviewed by the Secretary of State’s office. Brophy expects it will be approved sometime in the next three weeks. Then, he and other spring-forward haters will need to collect 125,000 signatures to qualify for the statewide ballot.

Not every state in the U.S. adheres to the spring and fall time change. Hawaii, most of Arizona, and the territories of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands never change their clocks. .

If all goes Brophy’s way, Congress would still have to approve the decision. States like Hawaii and Arizona were allowed to adopt year-round standard time on their own, but the federal Uniform Time Act does not currently allow for year-round daylight time.

Florida is also trying to stay on daylight saving time. State lawmakers passed a bill in 2018. Florida’s federal delegation introduced a bill last week to allow them to enact it.