County Bans New Ad Signs

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to temporarily ban new billboards in unincorporated areas.

Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who proposed the emergency moratorium, said she expected to have the board’s support for a permanent ban of such “visual blight” within a year for the 2,653 square miles of unincorporated territory, an area more than twice the size of Rhode Island.

Supervisors said they had been responding to a flood of applications for new signs since the city of Los Angeles approved a permanent ban on new billboards two weeks ago.

“The billboard industry has known that L.A. city was drafting their ban for some time, so they had already begun making their moves to apply for new billboards in the unincorporated areas of the county,” said Burke’s spokeswoman, Glenda Wina.

Under the provisions of Tuesday’s moratorium, billboards in the unincorporated county areas will be capped at the current 692 for 45 days. At the end of that period, Burke and others said, they expect to have the moratorium extended while a study is conducted and the supervisors reach a permanent decision.

Billboard companies and lobbyists reached Tuesday declined to comment on the moratorium. Some said they were caught off guard by the board’s action and have not had time to formulate a response.

When confronted with the city of Los Angeles’ ban on new billboards, the industry unsuccessfully proposed to take down one-fourth of the city’s 10,000 billboards in exchange for being able to erect 50 double-sided ads along freeways.

Since April 2000, applications have been submitted for 78 new billboards in the unincorporated areas of the county; 56 of the applications were for sites in Burke’s district in southwest Los Angeles County.

Fifty were approved overall.