Wanted: a Blight Buster

Rocky Delgadillo is in a tough spot. The city attorney, elected with $429,000 worth of free billboard ads, now wants residents to know that he cares as much as they do about the 10,000-plus signs looming over their neighborhoods. When he took office last July, Delgadillo listed cracking down on billboard blight as a top priority. Trouble is, even if his sincerity were convincing, the City Council has left him with few tools to pursue the estimated 4,000 illegal billboards or put the brakes on the erection of new ones.

A 1998 ordinance that banned alcohol and tobacco ads within 1,000 feet of schools and playgrounds is likely to be found unconstitutional, judging by the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last June on a similar measure from Massachusetts. But the City Council punted when it had a chance to approve an ordinance with teeth that would pass constitutional muster. Last June, the council defeated legislation that would have put tough limits on new signs while funding efforts to go after the illegal ones. Instead, it approved a milquetoast measure that the outdoor advertisers helped write.

That proposal, which the planning department is drafting as an ordinance, lets the billboard companies put up 70 gigantic new signs along Los Angeles freeways while promising to take down others around the city. It’s even softer on these eyesores than it sounds, for it might allow the companies themselves to decide which signs to take down, possibly including signs they sneaked up illegally.

But Delgadillo’s stopgap proposals to unclutter city streets only reinforce lingering perceptions that he is beholden to those who helped him win office. Earlier this month, for example, he urged that the 1998 ordinance barring ads near schools and parks be rescinded, suggesting that instead the city temporarily buy billboard space near schools for anti-smoking and anti-drinking ads. Delgadillo wisely tabled this idea when community groups nixed the idea of using public funds to fatten billboard companies’ coffers.

A better approach would be for the City Council, which has eight new members, to take another run at the problem. What’s needed to clear up blighted Los Angeles streets is an ordinance that permanently stops billboards from going up and empowers the city to take down the illegal ones that seem to pop up overnight.