People keep missing the point of Indiana's time-zone debates: Oh, we'll have an even-more-confusing patchwork of zones, and people will still make fun of us rubes, boo-hoo. Certainly that might be true if the federal Department of Transportation were to grant all the requests from counties that want to switch zones. It won't. It will consider patterns of economic activity, which means the burden of proof will be on those who want to change. The most likely outcome will be that the Central patches in northwestern and southwestern Indiana will extend a little bit beyond where they do now. In the meantime, we will have had a healthy debate in the state, county by county, about where our economic interests really are. That's a good thing.
