Signs of the Times

(illustration from illegalsigns.ca, Toronto)

I haven't mentioned billboard companies in my blog. It's about time. Billboard companies can be a serious source of apparent impropriety and corruption in local government. And this is an important time for them, because things are changing in the billboard world. It's no longer mostly about old-fashioned billboards along highways. It's digital supergraphics on buildings and all sorts of 21st-century innovations that require new laws and regulations. But the same old constitutional issues remain.

According to a post this week on the Ban Billboard Blight blog, in 2009 billboard companies paid a total of more than $1 million to firms registered to lobby Los Angeles city officials, according to Los Angeles Ethics Commission records. This time period corresponded with the drafting of a new city-wide sign ordinance (still pending before a City Council committee), and several challenges by community and advocacy groups to permits issued for digital billboards.

According to another recent BBB post, the billboard companies' lobbying firms "also helped bankroll 2009 election campaigns through fundraising for candidates for city attorney, city controller, and the city council. According to Ethics Commission reports, a total of $173,900 was raised for candidates," although this includes money from other lobbying firm clients. However, "the most favored recipient of this largesse was City Councilman Ed Reyes, who was given $26,450 for his re-election campaign against token opposition.  Reyes is chairman of the council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee, which conducted hearings on the new sign ordinance."

There's a missing link here, so that it is impossible to know how much the billboard companies indirectly gave to council candidates. But according to the second BBB post, one of the lobbying firms reported delivering the maximum $500 campaign contributions from one billboard company to three council members, including one who had recently said in a radio interview that he had never “willingly” taken a campaign contribution from a billboard company.

The L.A. official most involved with control of the new kinds of billboards is the elected City Attorney. According to another BBB post (this one from last June), the outgoing city attorney was elected with the help of free billboard advertising, was "publicly feted" by a billboard lobbyist, and brokered "a disastrous lawsuit settlement with the same companies that plastered his face around the city." There are a lot of ways a billboard company can cause trouble.

It appears that the new city attorney has been more aggressive in taking on the billboard companies, including suits and arrests of building owners and billboard company executives who put allegedly illegal signs on buildings. According to a recent BBB post, three of the companies filed a suit against the city to declare its ban unconstitutional. Their request for a restraining order against the city attorney was dismissed on April 2.

If you think that this is just a Los Angeles problem (all those tempting freeways and open spaces!), you should know that there are similar anti-billboard organizations and blogs dealing with New York City, Toronto, and the world. You can see from the picture above that Toronto has lobbyist issues, too. And here's a link to an editorial cartoon from the far smaller Durham, NC, where the same problem is occurring.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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