COLUMBIA, S.C. — It is almost that time of the year, get ready to fall back and reset your clocks next Sunday.
But with daylight saving time ending, it brings up the question on where South Carolina stands with a bill that would do away with time changes altogether.
Twice a year South Carolinians are used to changing their clocks, either falling behind or springing forward. From losing and hour of sleep to gaining an hour, it can sometimes be a dreaded move.
But will time changes like these be coming to an end?
To verify, News 19 took the question to Senator Thomas McElveen, who co-sponsored a bill that deals with this issue.
"Our South Carolina Senate started taking about this issue in 2018. We said maybe this is a good idea for South Carolina too and we also realized it might not be a great policy if our neighboring states weren't doing the same thing," McElveen said. "So, this past session in 2019, we did file a bill and basically what the bill is if congress takes action to authorize states to adopt Daylight saving time permanently then it is the intent of South Carolina to do that."
So if the federal government did allow states to decide on keeping daylight saving time permanently, rather than standard time--which we have in the winter--the Palmetto State would have more daylight in the evening all year long.
But McElveen said at last check the bill is still dependent on congressional action.
"The federal government doesn't allow a state to stick with daylight savings time permanently," McElveen said.
We can verify that South Carolina has passed the bill to permanently change to Daylight saving time, but we cannot verify when it will actually happen.
We can also verify that South Carolina will be falling back an hour next Sunday, November 1.
"Nothing has changed in South Carolina," McElveen said. "Maybe it will, but until that first Sunday in November we won't change the clocks again until the second Sunday in March. It's a lot to keep track of and hopefully we can get to a point where our days are longer and we won't have to keep making these changes."