Massachusetts lawmakers are once again weighing whether to stop the twice-a-year clock change — and most Boston.com readers who responded to our informal poll say it’s time to end the practice.

Earlier this month, Senate President Karen E. Spilka announced her support for legislation filed by State Sen. John F. Keenan that would eliminate the biannual switch between standard time and daylight saving time. 

The bill (S.2157) proposes moving the state to a permanent Atlantic standard time system instead, but only if two or more New England states adopt the same time system.

Supporters of the proposal say the clock change disrupts daily routines and sleep schedules, while research has linked the shift to short-term spikes in heart attacks, strokes, and other health issues. The bill is currently being reviewed in the state Senate after being moved to the chamber’s rules committee.

We asked readers whether Massachusetts should stop changing its clocks. More than 470 readers responded, with a majority (83%) voting “yes” and just 17% voting “no.” Though most were in favor of ending the practice, many readers differed on which time system the state should adopt permanently.

Several readers said the clock change itself — rather than the specific time zone — is the real problem.

“It’s a relic of a bygone era that does more harm than good. We mustn’t be afraid to move on just because it’s always been that way,” Brian R. from Norwell said.

Others like Lana C. from Dorchester described the adjustment as disruptive to sleep and daily routines.

“Twice a year my sleep/wake cycle is disrupted for no apparent good reason,” she said. 

Some readers said their preference is simply to keep the later daylight hours that come with Daylight Saving Time.

“I love daylight after work. From early March through October I think we’re in the right time zone (and in June the sun gets me up so early I can’t imagine being on Eastern standard time). Winters are dark and winter mornings are not great for getting to work and school in the dark, but school schedules can be tweaked, can’t they? And it wouldn’t be changing the clocks, which is terrible for people,” argued Tom D. from Malden.

But readers who opposed ending the clock change said the proposal could create new problems — particularly darker winter mornings.

“It would be way too dark for the school buses in the winter if the clocks were on Atlantic time (effectively Daylight Savings time schedule in the winter). Safety for the kids is key,” K.G. from Billerica said.

Others raised concerns about coordination with neighboring states and the rest of the region.

“It would make no sense for Massachusetts to change to Atlantic Standard Time (i.e., Eastern Daylight Time year-round) unless the other New England states — at least, those north and east of us, New Hampshire and Maine — did as well,” said Ken P. of Lexington.

Still, for many readers who responded, the inconvenience of changing clocks twice a year outweighed those concerns.

Below is a selection of reader responses from both sides of the debate. 

Responses have been lightly edited for grammar and clarity.

Should Massachusetts stop changing its clocks?

Yes

“This is a no-brainer. No one likes changing the clock twice a year, and very few enjoy sunsets before 4:15pm. According to the legislation, the change would only take effect once two other neighboring states agree to make the switch as well. While that’s comforting, I’m not sure it’s even unnecessary. If Massachusetts were to make the switch today, we would be only the first domino. Every other New England state would follow in short order.” — Greg D., Arlington

“Changing clocks twice a year doesn’t make sense anymore. Save us the frustration and health risks!” — Carolyn, Brockton

“It’s disruptive every time we change the clocks. People miss appointments, interactions with people in places where the time either doesn’t change or changes at a different time get confused, and there are documented health and accident effects. I prefer the later daylight that we get with Daylight Saving Time, so I would prefer permanent Daylight Saving Time.” — Mabel L., Cambridge

“I hate the early darkness in November, December, and January when the sun sets before 5 p.m. The sun starts descending at 2 p.m. which is just depressing. Moving to the Atlantic time zone would help make the winter less bleak. It is a logical solution. If you look at a map, all of New England should actually be in the Atlantic time zone. People’s worries about kids going to school in the dark could be alleviated by having school start an hour later, something educators have been advocating for years.” — David C., Falmouth

“Although I would not enjoy the extra dark mornings in the winter, I feel this would be healthier for everyone.” — Nancy O. Marblehead

“I dread the time changes both in the spring and fall because the disruption of my circadian rhythm makes for a miserable two weeks of adjustment.” — Frank D., Hudson

“The twice a year time change is extremely disruptive, both for personal schedules and business schedules when working with other countries (as is very common for the tech industry that I am in). It would be better if we picked one time zone and stuck with it. While I prefer DLST for more light in the afternoon in the winter, I would not argue if we settled on Standard time year-round.” — Wayne, Tewksbury

“A change to Standard Time would be a benefit to all. While Daylight Savings may have had a benefit for a period of time, the change is taxing and unnecessary given the advancements in outdoor lighting since it was first introduced. Additionally, even at Standard Time it will be light at night throughout the summer giving ample time for fun outdoor activity in the evening hours. All in all, it would streamline yearly activities and be a benefit to all – and worth a move to the state!” — Peter, Exeter, New Hampshire

“Daylight at the end of the day is far more valuable than daylight at the start. The winter days are too short of daylight so adding an hour at the end in exchange for an hour at the beginning would be much better.” — Rob M., Westford

“Changing the clocks only disrupts our circadian rhythms and daily life, it also has a negative effect on our health.  It causes sleeplessness, can be strenuous to our bodies with our blood pressure, heart health, and our alertness and focus. I prefer standard time as a permanent solution.” — Andrea, Plymouth

“I would prefer to keep the current time where it is sunnier in the afternoon. Yes it is hard to get up in the dark, but longer afternoons and evenings mean kids are outside playing more and there is more time for family activities after work.” — Lynn H., Holliston

No

“School Districts who have their elementary students start their day before middle and high school students will be at risk — putting children as young as 5 years old at a bus stop before sunrise (darkness) for 4 months (November through February).” — Rick G., Dover

“I value the extra daylight hours in summer, and I don’t see how changing the clock one hour twice a year is a big deal when people willingly expose themselves to jet lag and stay up late for various reasons, both of which have a more significant impact on sleep.” — John H., Upton

“Everyone who works in finance/tied to the financial markets in New York would suffer by being ahead an hour.” — Matt, Milford

“I remember the year back in the 1970s during the energy crisis when we stayed on Daylight Savings Time all year. Kids were waiting in the dark for their school buses in the morning, as it didn’t start to get light out until after 7:30 am in the dead of winter. Yes, the extra light at the end of the day was nice, but it was awful in the mornings, especially for the kids.” —Betty, Waltham

“If it were to keep Daylight Savings Time then yes, but to switch us to Atlantic Standard Time would put us 4 hours ahead of the rest of the country and out of sync with the rest of the region and nation. Much more disruptive!” — John, Shrewsbury

Boston.com occasionally interacts with readers by conducting informal polls and surveys. These results should be read as an unscientific gauge of readers’ opinion.

Annie Jonas is a Community writer at Boston.com. She was previously a local editor at Patch and a freelancer at the Financial Times.

“Half of my Massachusetts clients over the last five years have either left or are planning to leave,” Karger says. That represents “billions of dollars in net worth and hundreds of millions of dollars in annual income.”

He — and other experts I’ve talked with — note that Massachusetts faces stiff competition from other states for tax dollars. Such moves could profoundly impact funding for schools, infrastructure, social services, and charities. And it’s part of a growing discussion about the state’s competitiveness as a place to do business, build companies, and raise a family.

Karger lives in Boston, and he’s an unabashed booster of the state: “We’ve got the best private schools. We’ve got the best public schools. We’ve got hospitals. The city of Boston is the most beautiful city in America. It’s the safest big city in America.”

But he notes that wealthy people tend to be particularly mobile. And many of his clients are “straddling,” he says. “They bought nice homes in the Bocas or the Palm Beaches or the Miamis and are starting to plan.”

Much of this planning began in late 2022, when the “millionaires tax” was approved in Massachusetts. The new law imposed an additional 4 percent tax on income over a million dollars. Since the state tax rate is 5 percent, that means that income over a million dollars would be taxed at 9 percent.

This applies not only to people who make more than a million dollars a year (the threshold for 2025 is $1,083,150), but also to someone who, in a given year, sells a $1.5 million house, even though they might only make $100,000 in salary.

And the tax comes on top of already-strict rules around wealth in Massachusetts: The estate tax is one of the heftiest in the country, kicking in for any estate worth more than $2 million. Only Oregon and Rhode Island have lower thresholds. In New York — another Democratic stronghold — the estate tax kicks in at $7.35 million. In California, there is no estate tax (though California is starting to face its own exodus of wealthy residents as it considers a wealth tax for billionaires).

New Hampshire, Karger says, has seen a large influx of wealthy folks from Massachusetts. “We have clients [who] have had homes up there and are moving up there.” And the shift to New Hampshire is part of a broader trend among Massachusetts residents: In 2024, more than 20,000 relocated up north. Meanwhile, Florida absorbed nearly 22,000 Massachusetts residents.

And that has ripple effects, Karger says. “Charity is a big, big problem. All of these nonprofits here, I see it firsthand. My clients, all of a sudden, they leave and they wind down their commitments to Children’s [Hospital] and to MGH and to the smaller local nonprofits.” Karger says he’s “very scared of this continued wallet drain.”

He understands why it might make sense to “tax the rich. They’ve made so much money.” But he notes that the rich can easily say: “Tax me all you want. I’m out.” He says he hopes “we don’t destroy the best city and best state in America. … I really hope we can figure this out.”

Florida-based entrepreneur Craig Welch, who founded a series of financial tech companies and used to live in Massachusetts, argues that “when the entrepreneurs leave, lots of other jobs leave too … I’ve started my third company in Florida, and there are right now 25, 30 employees that would’ve been in Massachusetts, and they are not going to be.”

Welch says the business landscape — including the approach to taxes — was better under Bill Weld, who was governor for much of the 1990s. But since the millionaires tax went into effect, he says, “I know four people who have left the state… And what all of them have said to me is: It’s not the tax. It’s the fact that Massachusetts is making it clear that they don’t want VCs and entrepreneurs in the state.”

Like Welch, Boston-based venture capitalist Antonio Rodriguez has witnessed an exodus of wealthy people, particularly amongst those who fund companies. Much of the exodus started during the pandemic, he argues: “When we all had our heads in the sand, government did a bunch of dumb things.”

Rodriguez, a managing partner at Matrix, believes that the millionaires tax was passed without “a really organized debate about whether it made sense in terms of innovation in Massachusetts.” People assumed that the “golden goose” — the dynamic Massachusetts ecosystem — would continue to offer up “golden eggs,” he says. “ As opposed to taking care of the goose before it dies from malnutrition.”

At the same time, companies allowed more employees to work remotely, and many workers scattered. Last year, a Massachusetts Business Roundtable report showed that more than 85 percent of midsize-to-large employers surveyed had staff affiliated with Massachusetts operations who worked remotely. And that number has only risen since 2023, despite a raft of back-to-office headlines.

Rodriguez says many of his fellow investors left, too. Younger venture capitalists “moved away because of [a] lack of deal volume,” he said. Some in the prime of their career also left, despite Rodriguez’s belief that Massachusetts is a great place to raise kids. (He cites New York City and San Francisco as places where VCs have moved.)

“The thing that scares me now,” Rodriguez says, “is that we’re in this natural period where the Silicon Valley machine is spinning really quickly with Anthropic and OpenAI and Cursor and all of these AI companies that are there. And instead of seeing some of that diffusion come back here, which would’ve been typical of prior waves, there’s no one back here to pick it up because everyone’s leaving or has left.”

In 2025, Welch, the entrepreneur, lost a high-profile court case after Massachusetts claimed he had undeclared income from the state. Welch — who lived in New Hampshire at the time — sold his $4.7 million share in a Massachusetts company he had founded about 20 years earlier. Welch argued that the shares were not awarded as income; at the time he received them, they had essentially no value. The Department of Revenue prevailed.

An investor who relocated to Florida told Rodriguez that “Massachusetts just feels ‘grabby’ for the first time.”

When it comes to tech and innovation, he says, “these geographic questions are about flywheels that start spinning. And you get enough people of a certain type, and the flywheel spins. And it’s easier for that next person to come and stay here. I think that the best thing you can have as a city or a state is a flywheel that’s unique to some source of intellectual capital or talent that is spinning really quickly.” (See the rise of biotech locally.)

He says when those flywheels “slow down — or God forbid, stop spinning altogether — then the difference between here and Milwaukee — not to pick on Milwaukee — is much less than people think.”

The question of whether the millionaires tax has been successful is controversial. The Institute for Policy Studies points to the fact that between 2022 and 2024, Massachusetts households with at least $50 million increased by more than 25 percent (from about 2,000 to about 2,600).

But during those years, the stock market also skyrocketed. It’s possible that lots of wealthy people took their tax dollars to other states, but a batch of new residents joined the $50-million-plus club. Now, the question is: What will happen to those people, their tax dollars, and the jobs they create?

Massachusetts faces a harsh reality: It isn’t about what’s fair. Without any national push to raise taxes on the wealthy, it’s a race to the bottom among states. And in order to impose its vision of fairness, our state may ultimately pay a very high price.

“Massachusetts thinks [the new tax has] been a big tailwind, and it’s got a couple billion dollars of collected revenue,” says Karger. “That’s shortsighted. They’re going to need that, because people are leaving.”

Kara Miller is the host of the podcast It Turns Out. Send comments to kara.miller@globe.com.

A Massachusetts hospital employee is facing some disturbing charges.

According to police, on Monday, Barnstable Police Detectives, with the assistance of the United States Secret Service Cyber Fraud Task Force executed a search warrant at a residence located in Marstons Mills. As a result of the search warrant and follow-up investigation, 38-year-old Scott Grella of Marstons Mills was arrested on multiple Child Pornography charges.

This search warrant and subsequent arrest was the result of a CyberTip received by the Massachusetts State Police Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force that was assigned to a task force officer from the Barnstable Police Department Investigative Services Division. The CyberTip alleged that an online account, later identified to be Grella’s, possessed and disseminated child pornography. The investigation also revealed that at least one of Grella’s digital devices contained child pornography at the time of his arrest.

Grella was arrested and then booked at the Barnstable Police Department on the charges of Possession of Child Pornography and Dissemination of Child Pornography.

He was arraigned at Barnstable District Court on Tuesday and was ordered held on $3,000 cash bail. He is scheduled for a pre-trial hearing on May 12th.

According to Boston 25 News, Grella is an employee at South Shore Hospital and has been placed on administrative leave.

The investigation remains ongoing at this time. The case is being prosecuted by the Cape & Islands District Attorney’s Office.