This could finally be the year voters will get to decide if they’re sick of resetting clocks twice a year.

Sen. Jeff Bridges, D- Greenwood Village, plans to introduce a resolution later this week to settle the time-switching debate in Colorado once and for all.

Bridges’ concurrent resolution seeks to ask the voters in November if they want stop flipping back and forth between Mountain Standard Time and daylight saving time. If voters approve, the state would stay on Mountain time year-round. The resolution is expected to be introduced later this week.

A second part of the resolution deals with Congress, which has tried and failed for the past four years to pass legislation that would make daylight saving time permanent year-round.

Bridges’ resolution says that if Congress adopts daylight saving time yearround, Colorado voters would be asked if they want daylight standard time year-round.

“Changing the clocks twice a year is insanity,” Bridges said. He said it causes health problems, traffic accidents and “parents to lose their minds, when they have their kids on a regular sleep schedule and then have to change it by an hour.

“It is a ridiculous relic of the past that almost no one thinks is a good idea,” he added.

In the last four years, 19 states have adopted resolutions or legislation to make daylight saving time permanent, but it also requires Congress to give its okay in order for the switching to come to an end, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Daylight saving time had its origins around 1918, but was solidified in federal law in 1966 under the Uniform Time Act. It was originally enacted “as a way to save energy by giving more daylight in the evening hours, but some studies have called into question the degree of energy savings,” NCSL’s report states.

Neighboring states Utah and Wyoming are among the 19 that would like to go on daylight saving time yearround. Another 22 state legislatures, including Kansas and Nebraska, are considering legislation or resolutions, most seeking permanent daylight saving time. Only Hawaii, Arizona and several U.S. territories have never implemented daylight saving time. Arizona is on Mountain time year-round while Hawaii is on Hawaii Standard Time.

Congress has tried several times to start the process of making daylight saving time year-round, starting in 2018, and most recently with the Sunshine Protection Act of 2021, but the measures have never made it out of committee in the U.S. House or Senate. The measure has not yet been introduced in the 117th session of Congress.

In Colorado, lawmakers have mostly attempted to get the state onto daylight saving time year-round, an effort that has been afoot for more than 30 years, beginning in 1988, when then-Sen. Bill Schroeder, R-Morrison.

In 2011, Sen. Greg Brophy, R-Wray, came up with the idea to hold an initial hearing on his bill to go to daylight saving time year-round the day after the state changed the clocks. Sleepy-eyed lawmakers on the Senate Agriculture, Natural Resources and Energy Committee sent the bill to Senate Appropriations, where it died. Brophy tried again in 2013, but that bill never went beyond its first hearing.

Brophy tried to put forward a ballot measure for the same purpose for the 2020 general election but the initiative never made it to the petition stage.

Year-round Mountain Standard Time has had its fans as well. In 2011, Rep. Val Vigil, D-Thornton, also attempted a measure to put the state on year-round Mountain time. It met the same fate as Brophy’s bills.

The last effort was from Sen. Ray Scott, R- Grand Junction, whose bill to send a referred measure to the voters went by the wayside just days after the time switch.

Traditionally, the biggest hurdle at the state Capitol has been opposition from the ski industry, which complained in 2020 that year-round daylight saving timing would hamper ski operations, requiring workers to do morning duties in the dark. The 2020 bill also drew objections from the hotel and lodging association, and broadcasters who said the move would shift programming an hour later.

The switch to daylight saving timing takes place this year on March 13. Look for a committee hearing on March 14.