You’re soon to lose an hour due to daylight saving. Didn’t PA try to end the practice?
Daylight saving time will start at 2 a.m. Sunday, March 12, when Pennsylvania residents should “spring forward” and move their clocks ahead one hour.
Spring officially begins Monday, March 20, though State College area residents still have some wintry weather in the forecast.
But will Pennsylvania put an end to the tradition of changing clocks twice a year? Here’s what to know.
Daylight saving legislation in Pennsylvania, nationwide
The Pennsylvania legislature introduced a bill in 2021 that would end the use of daylight saving time in the commonwealth, but it was “laid on the table” in January 2022 and essentially died.
At least one Pennsylvania lawmaker has recently urged the U.S. Congress to make daylight saving time permanent.
These recent attempts were far from the only efforts to end clock-changing, and the U.S. Senate has signed off on similar legislation for the nation. But so far, Hawaii and Arizona are the only states in the country that don’t observe daylight saving time, and the Navajo Nation portion of Arizona does practice daylight saving.
History of daylight saving
The original daylight saving law passed the U.S. Congress in 1918, and state governments were left with the decision to keep or scrap it after World War I, CNBC reports.
The Uniform Time Act was passed in 1966 and requires state governments that choose to observe daylight saving to begin and end the practice on federally determined dates.
“Under the Uniform Time Act, States may choose to exempt themselves from observing Daylight Saving Time by State law,” the U.S. Department of Transportation website reads. “States do not have the authority to choose to be on permanent Daylight Saving Time.”
This year’s daylight saving time will end at 2 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 5.
