Jan 14, 2025

Are you tired of adjusting your clock twice a year? Lawmakers are, once again, making another run at putting us on Daylight Saving Time permanently. It comes up every year, it seems like most people are on board, and then it quietly goes away.

We have that and more in the following report. Thanks for reading,

Ike

Looking for the podcast? Click here or check other options below.

If national politics has a version of Alabama's annual lottery head-fake, it has to be Daylight Saving Time.

First of all, as the issue comes up, once again, let's clarify the sides of the issue because people often say they hate Daylight Saving Time when that's not what they mean.

Daylight Saving Time is what we're on during the summertime; you get an extra hour of daylight in the evening. Standard Time is what we're on right now; you're sometimes driving home from work at 5 with your headlights on.

Many people would rather not spring forward and fall back every year, so they would prefer to remain on either Standard Time or Daylight Saving Time.

Of those people, it seems that most of them -- or at least the most vocal of them -- would prefer to remain on Daylight Saving Time, so we have more evening sun during the wintertime.

Both Alabama's U.S. senators, Tommy Tuberville and Katie Britt, are backing a bill by Florida Republican Rick Scott that would put us forever on Daylight Saving Time, reports AL.com's Leada Gore.

This has been introduced several times before and has made it through the Senate before dying in the House of Representatives.

The first question that likely comes up is: Why can't we make this change at the state level, and don't some states already deviate from the spring-forward/fall-back cha-cha?

Per the Uniform Time Act of 1966, Alabama could decide to go permanently on Standard Time but not Daylight Saving Time. That's what Hawaii and Arizona do. But that would just mean earlier evenings in the summertime and not affect winter evenings at all.

Which is the opposite of what the lawmakers want.

Another freestanding emergency room has opened in Alabama, this one in Hartselle, reports AL.com's Savannah Tryens-Fernandes.

This is a trend we've seen in recent years, with now nearly a dozen freestanding ERs in the state. The freestanding ERs are staffed and equipped as you would expect an ER to be, but they're not part of a hospital facility. They do need to be affiliated with a hospital. Cullman Regional Hospital and the City of Hartselle worked to open the Hartselle Health Park ER.

We're all well aware of the diminishing number of hospitals in rural parts of the state. The president of the Alabama Hospital Association has warned us that freestanding ERs aren't a solution to that specific problem.

The freestanding ERs have taken hold in suburbs or places where sprawl or traffic situations make traveling to the hospital inconvenient. AHA President Don Williamson told us for a previous story that, in other places where rural hospitals have closed because they couldn't stay in business, the freestanding ERs face the same difficult economic environment that a hospital would.

Hartselle, meanwhile, finally has an ER facility in the city limits. That will save some people the 20-minute drive to Decatur for emergency services.

Gov. Kay Ivey has ordered that U.S. flags at the Alabama capitol and on state buildings be flown at full-staff on President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration day, Jan. 20, reports AL.com's Howard Koplowitz.

The move, at least in states under similar orders, apparently relieves Trump of concerns he had expressed over flags at half-staff during his inauguration.

President Biden ordered flags to be at half-staff for a 30-day period of mourning after President Jimmy Carter's death. That's standard procedure.

Trump objected to the order being in place during the change of power, however, taking to social media to claim that Democrats were "giddy" over the lower flags because they don't love America.

Nerdy copy editor side note: People often use the terms interchangeably, but per the AP Stylebook, "half-mast" is used on ships and naval stations ashore but "half-staff" is used elsewhere.

An Alabama state lawmaker has agreed to be bound by a protective order in exchange for having domestic-violence charged dropped, reports AL.com's Heather Gann.

State House Rep. Tracy Estes, a Winfield Republican, was jailed in September on charges of third-degree domestic violence. His wife claimed she locked herself in a bedroom during an argument and that Estes threatened her in an incident that lasted a couple of hours. She claimed that his behavior had also happened previously.

The court agreement puts a protective order in effect for two years and states that if Estes makes contact with his wife it would amount to a breach of the order. Estes also has to pay court costs and complete a state-certified domestic-violence offender program.

A breach of the agreement would result in the charges being reinstated.

In 1936, R&B singer/songwriter Clarence Carter of Montgomery.

If you miss that feeling of sitting down with in-depth, local reporting, consider subscribing to the Huntsville Times, Birmingham News, or Mobile Press-Register.

By subscribing, you’ll get a new daily digital edition in an email link, or you can use an app to download the new edition every day on your smartphone or tablet. You also get exclusive access to stories written for our subscribers.

“Down in Alabama” listeners get your first month free by going to al.com/digitalsubscription/exclusive and enter the promo code DIA24.

You can find “Down in Alabama” wherever you get your podcasts, including these places:

We appreciate you for taking the time to read today. Hope you're able to check back soon. Meantime, reply to this email with any suggestions you might have.

If you're so inclined, we'd love it if you'd forward to friends who might be interested in reading. (And if you're someone who's been forwarded this newsletter, we encourage you to subscribe and get this in your inbox every day.)