PHOENIX — Arizona successfully fought the federal government three decades ago to be allowed to stay on standard time year-round, ultimately getting a last-minute exemption from a mandate to use daylight-saving time.
Arizonans regarded it as a no-brainer, having recently tried daylight-saving time and quickly deciding they wanted no part of it.
Daylight-saving time meant the sun was out longer during summer evenings when triple-digit temperatures are the norm in the populous desert cities of the state, located on the western edge of the Mountain time zone.
Back in 1973 when state officials applied for the exemption, memories were still fresh of what happened when Arizona tried out daylight-saving time in 1967 after the federal government tried to standardize time practices across the nation.
It didn't go well with most desert-dwellers.
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"You had to wait until 10 o'clock to start a ballgame. You go to the drive-in theater — they couldn't start the movie until 9:30 or 10 p.m.," recalled Bob Scott, a retired newsman for Phoenix radio stations from 1963 to 2006.
The Legislature quickly changed course in 1968 when lawmakers reported for their annual session. They put the state back on standard time year-round.
The state has been there ever since, and when the other 48 states go to daylight-saving time at 2 a.m. Sunday, Arizonans — and Hawaiians — won't.
However, the Navajo Nation, in Northeastern Arizona, does observe daylight-saving time.
Though stockbrokers and some other business interests complained about the resulting seasonal three-hour time difference from the East Coast when most of the country was on the daylight-saving time, those who wanted to dump the practice were loud and clear in making their views known to legislators.
"Folks that were here just didn't think they needed any more heat," Scott said.
The fact that most other Americans were on daylight-saving time didn't matter to some Arizonans.
"They probably don't enjoy enchiladas like we do either, so should we stop eating them?" A.C. Jones of Scottsdale asked rhetorically in a letter published by The Arizona Republic in 1969.
So when the federal government brought the issue up again in 1973 with a mandate intended to save energy, Arizona asked Transportation Secretary Claude S. Brinegar to be exempted.
Then-Gov. Jack Williams sent a telegram telling Brinegar that switching to daylight-saving time would trade an hour of low energy use in the morning for an hour of higher energy use in the evening.
"Arizona has gone down this dreary road before," Williams stated, citing the 1967-1968 flip-flop. "It's hard to understand until you go through it as we already have."
Legislators, including then-Senate Majority Leader Sandra Day O'Connor, also were on board. She was quoted in a newspaper story as agreeing that there'd be no fuel savings for Arizona under daylight-saving time.
The state's big-gun congressional delegation pitched in, and Brinegar approved the exemption on Jan. 4, 1974, two days before the mandate kicked in.
"Common sense has prevailed." state House Majority Whip Frank Kelley told the Republic.
There hasn't been a serious push since to put Arizona on daylight-saving time.
On the Net
Arizona library page on daylight-saving time: azlibrary.gov/links/daylight.cfm
