By By ERIN VER BERKMOES / Niles Daily Star
NILES - Indiana may go to daylight savings time.
Law makers in Indiana may soon be deciding on whether or not they should bring daylight savings time to all of Indiana.
Members of the Indiana House commerce, economic development and small business committee will hear the bill and vote as to whether or not it should be sent onto the house.
Right now all but a small portion the northwest and southwest corners of the state of Indiana is on Eastern Standard time. This means that in the spring and fall when state of Michigan residents change their clock in accordance with Eastern daylight time, also known around the area as Michigan time, either forward or backward an hour, residents of Indiana keep their clocks the same.
The changing of the clocks would not only effect the residents of Indiana, but many of the people who live along its border in places including Niles.
Living so close to the border, many people work down in Indiana, as well as go to the doctor, church, do their shopping and a variety of other business to the south.
Indiana has tried to change the time over the past three decades on 24 different occasions, in order to be on the same wave length as 47 other states.
But what is different about this time is that the bill has the support of Indiana's new Governor Mitch Daniels.
If this bill does indeed get to the Full House, it would the first time since 1995 that this type of legislation made it to the floor of either of the chambers in the General Assembly. The bill failed to clear the House that year.
One of the reasons the state would like to change to Eastern daylight time, according to news sources, is that it is often difficult for businesses in Indiana to communicate with out of state businesses, because the out of state ones sometimes don't know what time it is in Indiana.
Officials also see this as a reason for businesses not wanting to bring any business or jobs to Indiana.
But according to other sources, lawmakers such as Representative Jackie Walorski (R) of Lakeville, Ind. said that if the evidence for this sort of thing was quite overwhelming in support of the change, then daylight savings times would have been implemented years ago.
If the bill does indeed pass, this would mean that most of Indiana would be on Eastern daylight time, which is the same as Michigan, Ohio, New York and Washington D.C.