...and here's my report from 2012-05-21: I see someone tried to address this last month but it kind of fell flat. The solution seems clear to me, as described here:
In ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/data/northamerica v8.54 dated 2009-05-17 (the current version), it says"
# US Pacific time, represented by Los Angeles # # California, northern Idaho (Benewah, Bonner, Boundary, Clearwater, # Idaho, Kootenai, Latah, Lewis, Nez Perce, and Shoshone counties, # and the northern three-quarters of Idaho county), # most of Nevada, most of Oregon, and Washington
The first instance of Idaho in the county list (between Clearwater and Kootenai) should be removed since the list ends with "and the northern three-quarters of Idaho county". That is, only the northern 3/4 of the county, not the whole county, is included (assuming that is true).
The dividing line is actually the Salmon River, so I would change the paragraph to: # US Pacific time, represented by Los Angeles # # California, northern Idaho (Benewah, Bonner, Boundary, Clearwater, # Kootenai, Latah, Lewis, Nez Perce, and Shoshone counties, # and the part of Idaho county lying north of the Salmon River), # most of Nevada, most of Oregon, and Washington If we wanted to give the same detail treatment to NV and OR: # US Pacific time, represented by Los Angeles # # - California # - Washington # - Northern Idaho (Benewah, Bonner, Boundary, Clearwater, # Kootenai, Latah, Lewis, Nez Perce, and Shoshone counties, # and the part of Idaho county lying north of the Salmon River) # - Oregon (except for the northern 3/4 of Malheur County) # - Nevada (except for West Wendover) ...and again on 2012-06-08: I'd like to try this once more without it getting buried or expanded into other issues, please. As it's written, the America/Los_Angeles comment in northamerica v8.54 in tzdata release 2012c does not make sense. The simple solution is to remove 7 characters from line 395: < northamerica
northamerica.new
395c395 < # Kootenai, Latah, Lewis, Nez Perce, and Shoshone counties, ---
# Idaho, Kootenai, Latah, Lewis, Nez Perce, and Shoshone counties,
Alternatively, more accuracy could be provided by the following changes: < northamerica
northamerica.new
395,397c395,398 < # Idaho, Kootenai, Latah, Lewis, Nez Perce, and Shoshone counties, < # and the northern three-quarters of Idaho county), < # most of Nevada, most of Oregon, and Washington ---
# Kootenai, Latah, Lewis, Nez Perce, and Shoshone counties, # the towns of Burgdorf and Warren, and the part of Idaho county # lying north of the Salmon River), Nevada (except for West Wendover) # Oregon (except for part of Malheur County), and Washington
AFAIK, this description is completely accurate (though it doesn't reflect unofficial observances in Nevada, which I assume wouldn't be appropriate here). (see http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2012-June/018083.html for ensuing discussion, which went off on a fine point about Oregon and died). -- Alan Mintz <Alan_Mintz+TZ_IANA@Earthlink.net>