BY: WHITNEY DOWNARD, Indiana  Capital Chronicle

Two decades ago, after a prolonged and heavy lift through the 2005 legislative session, former Gov. Mitch Daniels signed a monumental piece of legislation into law: establishing daylight saving time in the Hoosier State.

The vote was so contentious that former House Speaker Brian Bosma left the voting machine open for hours, whipping up the votes needed to advance the priority bill for Daniels.

“We just almost had a majority, and then people would switch,” Bosma, a Republican, told the Indiana Capital Chronicle. “We went up to caucus and I had to press on.”

In the end, lawmakers advanced the measure through the house by a single vote — a decision that cost the voting lawmaker his seat in the body.

Hoosiers first sprung forward in 2006.

Prior to the law, Indiana had a hodgepodge mashup of time zones that varied from county to county. As with today’s dynamic, most Hoosier counties aligned themselves with Eastern Time, but a handful located in the southwestern and northwestern tips opted for Central Time.

Just over a dozen counties clustered near the state’s borders — including all of the counties following Central Time and at least five Eastern Time counties — voluntarily followed daylight saving time with the majority of the nation. But roughly 76 counties didn’t, which meant they switched from Eastern Time to Central Time and vice versa when other states sprung forward or fell back.

“There are 13 states with more than one, but Indiana had three (time zones),” said Daniels. “… as a practical matter, we were in the Eastern zone during the winter, and in the Central zone during the summer.”

Synchronizing all of the time zones to make it easier to do business with national counterparts was critical to Daniels’ first-term agenda, which sought to “make Indiana, once again, a competitive state.”

“Economically, we were at the bottom of people’s lists of places where you might bring jobs and do investment. We did dozens of things: taxes, regulation, litigation, building, infrastructure. Everything that might make Indiana a more attractive place and more prosperous place,” said Daniels. “And daylight savings was a small part of that.”

Because of the confusing time zone distinctions — which The West Wing mocked in a famous 2002 episode — deliveries were missed or rescheduled, conference calls were dropped and even airlines avoided locating hubs in Indiana, Daniels said.

“It’s an interconnected world, more so today than twenty years ago,” Daniels said. “… It used to be you’d have to look at the calendar before you look at your watch.”

Gettting it through the chamber

A 2005 story in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reported that 43 Republicans and eight Democrats pushed the proposal across the finish line. At noon, the vote stood at 49-48 but, 11 hours later, four Republicans changed their minds.

“I’ve introduced and closed on this bill so many times I’m running out of things to say,” said Rep. Jerry Torr, R-Carmel. Torr authored the 2005 measure and retired last year. “It’s past time for daylight saving time. Let’s get this bill passed.”

Bosma said his caucus identified five Republicans it believed could vote for the measure “without political consequence,” believing that Indiana was “losing economic development opportunities, big ones, because of the anomaly.”

“My clearest recollection is getting a call at about 10:30 (p.m.) from (Gov.) Mitch Daniels, while we were in caucus, and the governor saying, “Brian, just pull the plug on this,’” recalled Bosma. “And I said, ‘Governor, I’ve spent way too much capital on this not to complete the job.’”

Returning to the floor, the body still didn’t have the final votes needed, with the tally stuck at 50 votes. After some final debate, one vote flipped — and Bosma told the body’s parliamentarian to lock it in.

“And the 51st vote was the one person that I told, ‘Under no circumstances, are you to vote for this,’” Bosma said. “… Troy (Woodruff) was a Marine, and he saw a grenade and jumped on it despite instructions not to.”

Woodruff, a freshman lawmaker from southwestern Indiana, had a district split between counties observing daylight saving and those that didn’t. He said the final tally came after nearly a dozen rounds of voting, none of which were enough to either pass or kill the bill.

“More than anything, it was just … time to move on and move forward,” Woodruff told the Capital Chronicle. “I just thought, in my head, if this is one thing we can do for free that could help … we really need to do this.”

He went on to lose his seat, but Woodruff said he didn’t regret his actions — even if he still gets the occasional message about a decades-old vote.

“I still get emails to this day about daylight savings time,” he said.

After his term in office, Woodruff was later appointed chief of staff to the Indiana Department of Transportation in 2012, resigning two years later before launching his own business and serving as president of a Fishers-based architecture firm.

The conversation today

The tumultuous 2005 session left such scars that, decades later, some veteran lawmakers say they won’t touch the topic.

“When I got to the General Assembly in 2010, there was a discussion where they said, ‘You can bring up bills for this, that and the other.’ But they said, ‘Whatever you do … don’t bring up the time zones,’” recalled Sen. Sue Glick, R-LaGrange.

Still, there’s usually a bill filed each year on the topic — though they don’t advance. In 2025, three bills were filed to exempt Indiana from daylight saving time but none moved.

Glick, whose district borders Michigan, acknowledged the difficulty for families navigating boundaries where crossing means gaining or losing an hour. Living at the western edge of the Eastern Time zone has its own drawbacks, with later sunrises and sunsets.

“In the evening, it’s still daylight, and kids aren’t ready to go to bed,” Glick said. “… (or) your kids are standing out by the side of the road to catch the bus in the dark.”

Outside of potential safety issues for children, daylight saving time also appears to increase electricity consumption along with car emissions. In the weeks following a shift to and from daylight saving, health risks and accidents spike while productivity dips.

On the federal level, the biannual grumblings about changing the clocks revive the ongoing debate: should states move to a permanent standard time or a permanent daylight saving time?

Moving to permanent daylight saving time would require federal permission — though both Arizona and Hawai’i use standard time year-round. In cases where the states made a change, like with Indiana, the U.S. Department of Transportation ultimately picks the time zone.

But, perhaps due to the pushback from 2005, Indiana is one of just two states who haven’t advanced legislation or resolutions supporting a permanent, year-round time, according to NBC News. Nineteen other states support permanent daylight savings time while the remaining 27 favor standard time.

The Indiana Chamber of Commerce, a big supporter of the time zone legislation 20 years ago, said they wouldn’t be a fan of moving Indiana to permanent daylight saving time — as proposed by the federal “Sunshine Protection Act.”

“From our perspective, moving to that permanent observance is a significant departure from the established system that Indiana businesses have used since 2006,” said President and CEO Vanessa Green Sinders. “…If there was consensus around eliminating the semiannual clock change, our preference would be standard time because it better aligns with winter daylight patterns and supports morning operational needs for all of our companies.”

Aligning all 92 counties with daylight saving time did bring a small, yet statistically significant job boost to the Hoosier state, but Daniels said it was also emblematic of a changing Indiana.

“I think that for those who were restless about the speed and the dimension of the changes that we were able to make, daylight savings time became a symbol,” Daniels said. “I can’t tell you how often people said, ‘Yeah, maybe (you’ll accomplish) the rest of all these plans, but you’ll never change that.’

“And I think when it did finally pass, it sent a message that we’d turned a corner here in Indiana and we intend to be a leader, not in the middle of the pack.”

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