Firms Lobby Over Future of Billboards

Billboard companies have spent $504,600 trying to influence the Los Angeles elections at a time when City Hall is considering new regulations that could help or hurt the billion-dollar industry.

With most of the best locations already in use and demand far outstripping supply, the industry has proposed lifting historic bans on advertising in certain areas.

At the same time, pressure is mounting from communities for a ban on all new billboards and a phaseout of existing signs in an effort to stamp out visual blight. And city transportation officials have strongly opposed the industry’s freeway billboard proposal, saying safety would be diminished.

“There are too many, and they are often in inappropriate places in neighborhoods,” said City Councilwoman Rita Walters. “They constitute environmental pollution.”

The stakes are high. The city’s 9,700 billboards generate more than $1 billion in revenue annually, said Ken Spiker Jr., the chief lobbyist for the industry.

The matter is so critical to billboard firms that they have offered a team of the city’s most powerful lobbyists up to $1 million if they succeed in securing favorable legislation.

Executives are hedging their bets by putting huge amounts of money into the election. Several city officials, including City Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, said the amounts being spent by the billboard companies are unusually high for an industry trying to influence an election.

At the heart of the debate is a series of proposals to ban most new billboards and remove thousands of existing ones. The industry originally proposed that up to 70 two-sided billboards be allowed in industrial zones along freeways in exchange for taking down 1,400 existing signs, half of which would be small billboards and half medium-sized.

The city Planning Department countered with a formula that would result in up to 7,700 sign faces being removed in return for permission to place 140 new freeway signs.

Spiker said his clients can support a compromise eliminating about 2,100 billboards, most of them small or medium-sized.

“If it goes any higher, then the industry will walk away,” warned Spiker, who represents five of the six major billboard companies operating in Los Angeles.

Billboard firms are eager to get legislation passed before July 1, when a new mayor, city attorney and six new council members take office.

“You know who the players are now,” said Edward Dato, vice president of Eller Media Co.

Eller has provided billboards worth $235,000 supporting Deputy Mayor Rocky Delgadillo’s campaign for city attorney against Councilman Mike Feuer, who has led efforts to ban billboards.

Brian Kennedy, an executive with Regency Outdoor Advertising, has provided billboards worth $250,000 in support of City Atty. James K. Hahn’s campaign for mayor against former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa.

Billboard companies and executives have contributed an additional $19,600 directly to several candidates in this year’s election, according to campaign filings with the city Ethics Commission.

Companies that have formed a coalition to push for an ordinance include Eller, Regency, Van Wagner Outdoor and Vista Media.

Kennedy said there is no connection between his support for Hahn and the debate over new regulations.

“One has nothing to do with the other,” Kennedy said. “He [Hahn] has paid his dues. He has been around, he grew up in the city, and he knows the city.”

Some have expressed concern about the campaign’s intensity.

“I’m very concerned about this kind of spending when an ordinance is in front of the council,” said Martin Schlageter of the Sierra Club. “I think it’s an attempt to intimidate council members.”

Miscikowski said of the campaign, “It’s clearly a sign of where companies think candidates are more in tune with their issues.”

Feuer has proposed a ban on new billboards and was a proponent of a 1998 ordinance banning alcohol and tobacco ads from within 1,000 feet of homes, schools, parks and playgrounds.

National beer and wine makers and liquor store owners sued in federal court to block the ordinance, which the next city attorney would probably be required to defend.