L.A.’s secret ugly
Do me a favor on your way to work today, or when you head home tonight. Be on the lookout for billboards.
You can’t miss ‘em. There are about 6,000 in the city of L.A. Or maybe there are 10,000. Or 3,000.
Why don’t I know? Because of something else that’s too huge to miss: the brass-plated nerve of the billboard industry.
Any time any city has tried to limit and control this “litter on sticks,” the billboard industry has frothed and fought, and frequently lost. Now, six years after L.A. ordered an inventory of all the billboards in the city limits in an attempt to find the illegal ones and regulate the rest, the billboard companies are having another well-lawyered hissy-fit. They say the city can’t assemble or reveal such a list because the location, size and ownership of the billboards is proprietary info -- a trade secret.
Coca-Cola’s “Ingredient X” is a trade secret. The Colonel’s blend of 11 herbs and spices is a trade secret. A billboard is not a trade secret.
As Councilman Jack Weiss, who’s been trying for years to chop the sight-blight down to size, told me, “It’s something for George Carlin’s list of oxymorons: secret billboards.”
The claim is such an absurd insult to Los Angeles that the companies might just get away with it. That’s because of another thing that isn’t a secret: How, over the years, the billboard biz has played L.A. and other cities like a cheap violoncello. If Clear Channel Outdoor and CBS Outdoor -- the billboard giants here -- are pushing to get away with this claptrap, it’s because they think L.A. has all the backbone of cooked linguine.
They may be right. Los Angeles has been trying to get a grip on billboards since -- I kid you not -- 1899. A headline in The Times on Oct. 3, 1899, was “Billboards to be regulated.” And the sign industry’s leader, Gaylord Wilshire -- yes, that Wilshire -- threatened to take the city to court: “The council has to play to the galleries ... and we never pay any attention to them. We expect to oppose this ordinance ... and we are confident of winning.”
The 2008 chapter of this century-old tale launched when the LA Weekly asked the Department of Building and Safety for the location list of Clear Channel’s and CBS’ billboards. A rather feeble 2006 City Council deal “regulating” LED billboards declared that the vital details about billboards must be available to the public.
But the city attorney, Rocky Delgadillo, whose campaigns have benefited from the billboard industry’s generosity, has been trying to mugwump this one. He’s says he thinks the information is public. But the billboard bully boys are challenging that and, says Deputy City Atty. Steve Blau, if Building and Safety hands over the information and then some judge rules that billboard locations are indeed a trade secret, “the city would be sued for huge damages.”
What information the city does have isn’t in a form that’s easy to hand over. Why is that? Because when the council first demanded the billboard census, it also OKd per-billboard fees to pay for it, but the multibillion-dollar industry po’-mouthed until the $314 inspection fee got whittled down to $100 -- $200 less than the city’s annual billboard license fee 109 years ago. The city has yet to collect a solitary cent from the inspection program because the companies keep challenging it.
So what’s another billboard company lawsuit? It’s the city’s job to stand up to such bushwah. Wednesday, Angelenos and the LA Weekly won a round when a judge threw out the companies’ demand for a restraining order that would have kept the information under wraps. The city attorney’s office told me the companies are still trying to get this information locked up -- permanently. It’s a great M.O. As long as they’re in court, the billboards still stand, earning billions.
William Brinton is a Florida attorney working with Scenic America against billboard blight. In court, he encounters endless lawsuits, and from his office window, he’s seen government-owned trees in front of billboards get chain sawed, chopped down, pulled out of the ground or poisoned -- because they interfered with the “view” of the billboards. What’s happening in L.A. is “just the industry doing what it always does -- delay, delay, delay, and trying to bully people.”
Florida’s billboards are so public that there’s an interactive website -- www2.dot.state.fl.us/rightofway/dbhome.asp -- that describes every single one, down to whether it’s legal and how far it is from the road.
L.A. deserves one just like it. I asked you earlier to look for billboards. If the city is afraid to compile an up-to-date list, we shouldn’t be. Every time you see a billboard, note the nearest address, the company name (at the top of the board) and the number (usually at the lower left). E-mail it to Rocky.Delgadillo@lacity.org. So that just like the billboards on your way to work, he can’t miss ‘em.
