Got the Time? (Sure about that?)

Does anybody really know what time it is?

A new bill would synchronize New Hampshire’s time with the nation’s. Turns out, they’re different.

Rep. Timothy Horrigan (D-Durham) will present House Bill 61 to the House Commerce and Consumer Affairs Committee on Tuesday. It would revise the state’s Daylight Saving Time statute, in place since 1987, to keep pace with federal time.

The time warp happened here: In 2007, federal law changed the dates of Daylight Saving Time (for those states that practice DST, anyhow*). The new law has clocks falling back one hour on the first Sunday in November and springing ahead one hour on the last Sunday in March.

This change was never reflected, however, in the law that officially sets New Hampshire’s clocks. The Granite State’s 1987 state statute marks the last week in October and first week in April as the time to change the time.

And while the outdated state law (reading, “the time shall be as set forth in this section”) would apply to all functions and contracts of all state and local government officials, the 2007 federal law supersedes it.

Daylight Saving Time was first established by law in the United States in 1918 and in New Hampshire in 1921. The goal of the law was to maximize afternoon and evening daylight hours in the summertime and provide a boost for retail and outdoor activities.

In 2006, a bill to essentially supersize New Hampshire’s daylight savings by moving the clock forward two hours was deemed “inexpedient to legislate” by the House Commerce Committee. The full House followed suit, and the bill died.

When the new House Commerce and Consumer Affairs Committee meets tomorrow for a public hearing on HB 61, it will tackle not only time. Hearings will begin on a proposal to study the potential merging of the state insurance and banking departments and the securities division.

>> House Commerce and Consumer Affairs Committee (Banking and Business Division) meets in the Legislative Office Building, Room 302, on Tuesday, Jan. 18, for the following public hearings:

10:00 a.m. — HB 47, relative to inactive license status for real estate brokers and salespersons.

11:00 a.m. — HB 129, relative to the licensure of attorneys as real estate brokers by the real estate commission.

1:15 p.m.— HB 102, establishing a committee to study merging the insurance department, banking department, and securities division of the office of the secretary of state.

2:00 p.m.— HB 61, relative to daylight saving time.

This Daily Dispatch was written by Michael McCord.

* Almost all of the United States use Daylight Saving Time. Arizona (except the Navajo nation) and Hawaii do not. Neither do the territories of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Posted by Hilary Niles on Jan 17 2011. Filed under Government, Weekly Briefing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry