THE BILL THAT WOULD HAVE PUT CALIFORNIA ON STANDARD TIME YEAR-ROUND IS DEAD FOR 2025

California's SB 51 (Permanent Standard Time) died in the Senate Appropriations Committee Friday morning. It won't make it to a floor vote in the California Senate this year, let alone move over to the Assembly for that body's consideration. However, this year's version of the bill made it one step further than last year's version and given the fact that the proponents of permanent standard time are passionate, organized, and to some degree funded, we expect another run in 2026. It is almost a sure thing that the sponsor and the author tried to secure a Democratic co-sponsor this year but failed. No doubt, they will work to secure one for what, again, we should anticipate will be another run at this in 2026. Should they succeed in doing that, the bill will have a much better chance in 2026.

To put what happened to SB 51 in greater perspective, the California Senate on Friday considered the 432 bills that like SB 51 passed out of their policy committees of reference. Seventy-one percent (71%) of them came off Suspense and are now headed to the floor for the vote that sends them to the Assembly for that body’s consideration. SB 51 was among the 29% of such bills that were held in the Appropriations Committee and now dead for the remainder of the 2025 legislative session. The 307 bills that came off Suspense in the Senate along with the 435 that survived the same Suspense process in the Assembly must now pass their respective floor votes by June 6 to stay alive in the 2025 legislative process.

For those unaware, Nevada's version of a bill that would take that Pacific Time Zone state to permanent standard time (AB 81) died in the Nevada Senate the week prior when it failed to make it out of its Senate policy committee of reference. While California's SB 51 made it one very small step further in 2025, Nevada's AB 81 passed its Assembly House of origin by a 27-15 margin with support from both sides of the aisle. We suspect that the Nevada Golf Alliance similarly expects another run when Nevada's legislature again convenes in 2027.

Golf ought to pay heed to the organized and funded passion of those intent on taking states to permanent standard time as well as understand that it is highly unlikely that the United States Congress will soon take up any version of the "Sunshine Protection Act" that might bring some semblance of order to all this, let alone preemption. This is significant, because the rationale invoked by the consortium of Western legislators working together across the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, and California to move to permanent standard time has nothing to do with a preference for standard over daylight time, but everything to do with the fact that because of Congress’ failure to act, the ONLY way to get away from switching clocks is to go the permanent standard time option that a state can elect to follow without need of Congressional sanction or action. It has long been clear that far more prefer permanent daylight-saving time than permanent standard time when given the choice. California’s electorate demonstrated that preference by a 20% margin when that issue was on the 2018 ballot. Eighteen (18) other states have indicated the same preference in one of three ways – by initiative, legislation, or resolution. None – so far anyway – have indicated the standard time preference, albeit Nevada came close this year.

Bottom line: The issue is hardly dead because it failed in most if not all the states where it was tried this year, which is why while we here in California were very pleased that the NGCOA's Jay Karen made clear in his Senate testimony that the golf industry would be harmed by a permanent standard time regimen that its proponents have yet to demonstrate offer societal advantages over permanent daylight-saving time, we will continue to try to make clear to the game’s national organizations that the choice we are increasingly being presented with is NOT between the status quo (flipping clocks) and permanent standard time and permanent daylight-saving time; it is a binary choice between permanent standard time and permanent daylight-saving time.

Lest we end up with the choice dictated by a small cadre of narrowly focused sleep disorder specialists to the exclusion of the myriad other factors that ought to be included in any informed decision about which path to follow in possibly dispensing with clock flipping, we are going to have to get off the fence and into the policy deliberating arena. We too in California stayed off this issue for a long time, content to just lay low and let the status quo (clock flipping) prevail. But a combination of public opinion that is tired of clock flipping, a group of legislators impatient with having to wait for Congress to sanction the much more popular solution to clock flipping (permanent daylight-saving time), and a national organization of permanent standard time devotees who are passionate, organized, and funded, forced us to come into the light of day and oppose SB 51.

We know that there are many other sectors – e.g., tourism/travel, parks/recreation, schools, public safety – that would have suffered had SB 51 been signed into law in California. With any luck, some of them will come into the light of day and make that known when the issue is again joined.  

Before leaving this subject, it is important to remind everyone that in opposing SB 51 the California golf community did not challenge the medical research that associates clock flipping with certain marginally harmful impacts nor did it challenge the same research that finds a small marginal advantage in standard versus daylight-saving time, albeit the golf community did emphasize just how small a marginal advantage that research had yielded.

The golf community’s challenge was to the single-issue nature of their analysis – an analysis that failed to include the other health consequences of equal or in some cases greater concern, the economic consequences, the energy consumption consequences, the public safety consequences (property crime), and the vitiation of public opinion consequences that should also be part of the mix necessary to arrive at a fully informed decision about changing a practice Californians have been following for 100 years.

To be very clear about this point, the following is a verbatim transcription of the opening two paragraphs of the California Alliance for Golf’s formal opposition testimony before the Senate Energy Committee:

The California golfing community does not dispute the studies performed by the sleep disorder specialists that are the sponsors of this bill. Nor do we discount the fact that those studies ought to be part of any fully informed decision as to which is the better option – permanent standard time or permanent daylight-saving time – to discontinue the practice of biannually flipping our clocks.

We do however believe that before the legislature overturns the California electorate’s clear decision to move to year-round daylight-saving, the Legislature ought to consider ALL of the factors that are necessary to reach a fully informed decision on a practice that has been part of Californians’ lives for generations – factors such as the economic considerations that affect those active recreational activities like golf and tourism that would be harmed, the health considerations associated with reduced time for after-school sports/recreation programs, the increased crime associated with permanent standard time, and the reality of looming federal preemption, among others.

While golf believes that when all factors relevant to a fully informed decision re the whole standard versus daylight-saving time matter are put into play, that informed decision is likely to sustain what the California electorate chose in 2018, “likely” is not certain.

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There is more to the 2025 legislative session than SB 51, and for the most part that “more” is good news – “good” in the sense that the one bill golf opposed is now dead and the three (3) bills the game supported have in one case already moved over to the other House and in two cases moved off the Senate Appropriations Suspense file and toward floor votes.

SB 31, a bill involving access to recycled water, and SB 72, a bill that would set specific water supply targets and up those targets to make up for the 9 million-acre-feet predicted to be lost to aridification, are on their way to floor votes. We are optimistic that both will have more than enough votes to move on to the Assembly.

AB 310, a bill that would eliminate the requirement that junior/youth sports programs employ a “medical professional” to use AED’s to address cardiac arrests in favor of requiring only that a coach or other person trained in their use, has already passed out of the Assembly and moved to the Senate, where we expect it to be passed and ultimately signed by the governor into law before the AED requirement becomes effective in 2027. This bill’s benefit to golf’s myriad junior golf programs should be obvious.

A bill we were “watching” and reporting about at the beginning of the session, SB 89, a bill that “would state the intent of the Legislature to enact subsequent legislation to restrict the use of pesticides containing glyphosate for nonagricultural purposes,” was made into a 2-year bill by its author. That means that it will be taken up in January through the expedited processes that characterize the consideration of 2-year bills – a process that requires that such bills matriculate their policy and appropriations committees and the floor votes of their houses of origin in less than 30 days. We stated the following about this bill in February:

“Based on what we have to come to understand about the author’s intent, we believe that when the details are filled in, they will reflect a form of regulation that restricts who in the nonagricultural sector can use products containing glyphosate (e.g., licensed applicators), who can sell/disburse it (licensed vendors), and perhaps how those thus licensed can apply it. If we had to suggest a parallel, it might be to the way in which certain licensed applicators can apply neonicotinoids, a protocol that allows for golf course applications, while restricting other non-licensed applications.”

Based on that, we shared that CAG would not be doing anything more than watching SB 89 to make sure that our “understanding” about the author’s intent maintains. And that is going to be our course as the bill comes back up in January, assuming the author doesn’t just pull it.

Another bill we have been tracking all year, SB 601, a bill that purports to align California’s management of waters with the WOTUS (Waters of the United States) Rule as proposed by the Biden Administration, which was generally considered much more conservative in its reach than the one proposed by the Obama Administration, is moving toward a Senate floor vote that we anticipate will be one of approval. This bill has a very long list of both supporters and opponents. CAG has been tracking SB 601 not because of any objection to aligning California’s management of waters per the Biden Administration’s proposed WOTUS Rule. California has long had its own “Waters of California” regulatory paradigm. We have been tracking to satisfy ourselves that the final iteration of the bill does indeed do what it “purports” to do, as opposed to some of things that struck us as exceeding the author’s (Allen; D-Santa Monica) stated intent of merely restoring California to the status quo ante. So far, so good, albeit trying to decipher the details of this very long and complicated bill chock full of technical and scientific details can be trying.

There are a few other things we’ll be tracking as the session moves on: Whether Governor Newsom’s efforts to leave office with the funding in place to complete the Delta Conveyance Plan and the Sites Reservoir succeeds against strong environmental opposition and a 2025-2026 state budget that is at least $12 billion in arrears, and whether Assembly Member Buffy Wicks’ (D-Oakland) bill that would expedite many of the processes associated with CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) compliance can also succeed against opposition from the same environmental quarters. We’re not tracking these because they directly affect golf, although anything that affects water supply/conveyance is important to a water dependent sector like golf; we are tracking them because of what they inform us about where the politics of the state may be moving and how that movement may affect those issues that do directly affect golf in California.