The proposed South Dakota legislation that would move our state to year-round daylight Saving is a bad idea for three reasons:

1. Winter mornings. I do not want my children trying to get to school in the winter an hour before the sun is up because the risk to our children is too great. When the weather is bad, schools start late, and now they would start even later. Laborers would not have sunlight to work outside until 9 a.m., and they would have to work until 6 p.m. to get in a full day of work. Try working that out with day care providers, kids’ school events, evening activities, etc.

2. Summer evenings. If we would go the other way and get rid of daylight saving completely, that would mean one hour less time outside in the summertime evenings. Who wants to lose any of that time? Not me.

3. Businesses dealing with people and companies in other time zones would see confusion about business hours, online meeting times and phone call appointments. It would confuse dealings with cities at our borders, such as Sioux City.

If the representative who proposed this wants to start farm chores earlier in the day, go ahead, but leave the rest of us out of it. This proposed legislation was passed out of committee and then narrowly voted down 17-16 in the full Senate; let’s hope it does not come back next year.

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