State Senate in California Likes Daylight Savings Time After All

On Tuesday, California’s State Senate fell four votes short of the 21 votes necessary to approve a bill that sought to eliminate Daylight Savings Time.

Assembly Bill 385 was authored by Assemblyman Kansen Chu (D-San Jose). Last year, Chu had initially proposed the bill as AB 2496. He argued that Daylight Saving Time could be responsible for an increase in workplace accidents, and that it does not limit energy consumption, which was one of the reasons it was initially was adopted.

The Sacramento Bee notes that Chu’s bipartisan measure had the support of 11 Democrats and six Republicans, but that 10 Democrats and seven Republicans opposed it, bring the final tally to 17-17. “I like daylight saving. I just like it,” Sen. Anthony Cannella (R-Ceres), who voted against the bill, told the Bee.

Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) also voted against the bill, and said it would complicate trade, pointing out that the three-hour difference between the East and West coasts would become a four-hour difference during the spring.

For Sen. Jim Nielsen (R-Gerber), farmers’ wellbeing was his main factor for voting the bill down. He reportedly said they needed the extra hour of daylight during fall and summer harvests and that it’s unnecessary to “fix something that’s not broken.”

The idea of eliminating Daylight Savings Time might have been well-received by criminals, who dislike the time change since they prefer to work under cover of darkness. National Geographic points out that “during the extra hour of evening daylight, robberies decreased by 40 percent, according to data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System.”