Dear Mr. Slater,

I write today not to express any displeasure with your excellent stewardship of the Department of Transportation. I have not experienced any travel delays since you assumed office in 1997 (although I would appreciate any assistance you can provide in expediting Microtek Corp.'s scheduled delivery of a flatbed scanner to Calzone Ventures headquarters). Your story of humble beginnings is an inspiration to us all, and I applaud your encouraging Americans to change smoke detector batteries during the changeover to Daylight Saving Time.

However, as the Transportation Department has jurisdiction over Daylight Saving Time (DST), I must express a serious concern. I am well aware that the cycle of transitions from Standard Time to DST, and vice versa, has long been the subject of both strong opposition and quaintly exasperated "dj'ever notice"-type humor. However, my concerns focus on the financial and spiritual burdens the time shift creates for ordinary citizens.

Specifically, since the 1986 amendments to the Uniform Time Act of 1966, the first Sunday in April has seen the great bulk of Americans robbed of an hour of their precious time. Despite our best efforts to prepare for and minimize the impacts of this transition, there's no getting around the fact that the change takes a 60-minute block out of the private sector and effectively turns it over to the government. Beyond the obvious scheduling challenges this practice creates (who knows how many Roman Catholics were late for Easter Mass on this holiest of days?), the question must arise - Is the government really better suited to handle this hour than the American people themselves?

The obvious rebuttal would be that this hour is returned when we revert to Standard Time on the last Sunday of October. Not so fast. From the beginning of April until the end of October is a period of almost seven months, meaning that the greater part of a year will pass before my hour is returned to me. In 1999, for example, that hour will belong to the government for a total of 211 days. I on the other hand will have control of the hour for only 154 days - with most of those days falling during the dead of winter. What will happen to my hour while it is in the government's hands is anybody's guess, though I do not disount the possibility that some elected official will use it for lunch with unscrupulous and possibly foreign lobbyists, or that the Department of Defense may use the extra time toward development of new and terrible weapons which will be employed in our campaign against Serbia (another government activity on which I was not consulted, though I am a registered voter in good standing).

There is also a fiscal burden involved in sacrificing this hour, one which I believe disproportionately hits those of us who have the enterprise and good fortune to be self-employed. In short, my time is money. I am paid by the word. As a 50-cent-per-word rate is now toward the bottom of my scale, and under ordinary circumstances I can churn out between 200 and 500 publication-ready words in the course of an hour, the loss of this hour effectively deprives me of a sum worth at least $100 to $250. We all know the power of a dollar invested, and of compounded earnings, so I don't need to explain to you the effects of this temporary deferral. To take an analogous situation, the Internal Revenue Service demands immediate delivery of income tax through its withholding mechanism (which, like DST, was proposed as a "temporary" wartime emergency measure but has now become a permanent fixture of American life), and penalizes anyone who waits until the end of the fiscal year to surrender taxes owed. And with good reason; the IRS understands that there is a financial disadvantage in not having immediate control of those monies. But ordinary Americans should expect similarly prompt delivery of their own property, even or especially in the case of temporal property. We must not forget the time value of money. Given the continued strength of the stock market, the cumulative loss involved in not having control of an hour's worth of earnings over a seven-month period is substantial. It may not seem like much in your universe of costly blue-ribbon commissions and thousand-dollar toilet seats, but for a working American it is an irksome waste of potential income.

But the pecuniary impact is not the main issue here. Of greater concern is the loss of time over a large portion of the year, since, unlike money, time can never be replaced once it is expended. Moreover, there is little justification for this theft of time from the standpoint of government operations, since those are already funded, indeed overfunded, by collection of income taxes. In short, it should be enough that you take my money. Managing your time should be your own responsibility.

Finally, I'd like to add that I am in no way disputing the logic or efficacy of Daylight Saving Time per se (though it's worth noting that DST would be more useful during the winter, when harried 9-5 workers are already burdened by darkened after-work hours). Nor do I quibble with the historical logic behind the need for extra hours of daylight. In fact, I believe DST works so well that it should be extended throughout the entire year, with due compensation to the public for the one-time charge of an hour. My objection is to being cumulatively deprived of precious hours that are rightfully mine as an American.

Therefore, I insist that you immediately return to me the total number of "spring forward" hours you have taken from me over the course of my life, with extra hours added to the total as interest for the use of my time. I also insist that going forward you refrain from taking any more of my hours without my prior consent and without due compensation to myself and my family.

Sincerely,

H. Peabody Briggs
Founder and Chairman, Calzone Ventures

cc: Patrice Blackman