Keep Billboard Law Intact

Last fall, Gov. Gray Davis vetoed a special-interest bill that would have permitted a school that didn’t yet exist to erect a billboard on the roof of a downtown building it didn’t yet occupy. Now the school’s backers, led by a group of entertainment industry executives, are back with much the same problematic measure. The school is a worthy idea, but the bill that allows for its funding would set a lousy precedent.

Proponents say that without the rooftop billboard and the estimated $1 million in advertising income it would draw annually, there will be no school. The proposed academy is not the problem, only its funding mechanism. Last year, the Los Angeles City Council clamped a moratorium on any new billboards, a move that came years and many hundreds of billboards late. AB 762, by Assembly member Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles), would rip a big loophole in this hard-fought ban.

Nunez argues that because the parents of promising Eastside musicians often can’t afford private lessons, these students don’t make it into local music academies. Yet many local high schools that offer advanced musical training, including Hamilton High School Academy of Music and the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, draw student musicians from across the region, including many from poor families.

The proposed school’s backers don’t need the Legislature’s permission to erect the sign they want but they do need to get the neighbors’ OK. The city’s billboard moratorium permits new signs in communities or districts where residents say they want them. Hollywood, for example, is considering creating such a special district.

Last fall, City Councilman Ed Reyes, who represents the area where the school hopes to open, near the intersection of the Santa Monica and Harbor freeways, started the process to create a similar district there. But his application has stalled, in part because Reyes has been waiting to see whether the Legislature will make that process moot.

Nunez’s bill would short-circuit the public hearings and other approvals Reyes still needs. If the neighborhood wants the billboards, let residents say so. But the public hearing process should not be shut down.

Billboards for schools would be a great idea if nearly every street corner in Los Angeles wasn’t already cluttered with blaring signs for new cars, the latest horror flick and hamburgers. Nunez’s bill would open the floodgates to more of the same by setting every cash-strapped school and nonprofit group scrambling for a legislative sugar daddy to introduce its own billboard exemption. AB 762 awaits its first committee hearing. Gov. Davis was right to veto this bill last fall. This year, the proposal shouldn’t get even that far.