Isles see no problems
with extending daylight-
saving time

For Andrew Barboza, one hour could mean having to wait another day to call his relatives in California.

"They are probably eating or going to sleep," said the 18-year-old Sears worker, who moved to Honolulu when he was 3.

But Barboza said he is not upset with Congress's approval of an energy bill Friday to extend daylight-saving time by an extra month, and therefore the three-hour time lag with his home state.

The changes, set to go into effect in 2007 if President Bush signs the bill into law, would add three weeks of daylight-saving time in the spring and a week in the fall, taking it beyond Halloween.

Hawaii, which does not observe the energy-saving measure, would stay three hours behind the West Coast and six hours behind the East Coast for seven months out of the year.

The extra month of daylight savings is not worrying local businesses, either, which are used to working with the country's various time zones, said Bank of Hawaii chief economist Paul Brewbaker.

Gerry Keir, spokesman for First Hawaiian Bank, said one extra hour for one more month should not affect the company.

He said the bank does a lot of business with its San Francisco-based sister bank, Bank of the West, and operations have always been smooth.

"We got it six months a year as it is," he said. "We are used to dealing with it. ... I don't see a difference."

The University of Hawaii also is in sync with daylight savings, and the school's spokesman, Jim Manke, said the change should not be disruptive.

Gary Ostrander, the school's vice chancellor for research and graduate education, said sometimes faculty have difficulty calling mainland schools.

"When it is lunch time here, the guy is just finishing up his last class," he said. But he played down the proposed changes, noting that "the difference between five or six hours is pretty negligible."

Hawaii and most of Arizona are the only places in the United States to ignore daylight-saving time. Indiana adopted daylight savings earlier this year. Legislative efforts to have Hawaii follow the program have not been successful.

Proponents of daylight-saving time say the extra hour of evening sunshine helps to reduce energy consumption and crime.

But in Hawaii, which is nearer to the equator than any other state, day lengths do not vary much, and the difference is not needed.

Daylight-saving time began in 1918 during World War I as a way to save fuel by reducing the need for lights in the evening. It continued in 1919 but was dropped after protests demanded it be abandoned in peacetime.

The practice was revived during World War II. After the war some states and localities kept up the practice, but there was no national standard until 1966, when the current system was adopted by Congress.

Hawaii opted out in 1967, when the law took effect.