L.A. wins a billboard battle

After years of being pushed around by billboard bullies, Los Angeles has begun to man up. Its latest step away from wimp status was marked Wednesday by a federal appeals court ruling upholding the city’s power to ban so-called supergraphics as well as billboards that face freeways.

Until now, sign companies have rubbed Los Angeles’ own laws in its face. They claimed that when the city allowed a few new signs to be visible from a freeway, it violated the 1st Amendment by supposedly favoring one or two commercial “speakers” and thus invalidated its entire regulatory scheme. Billboard companies ran rampant, ignoring city laws and daring City Hall to stop them. For too long, L.A. tried to talk its way out by giving up a little here and a little more there, but that only made the city weaker in the eyes of the companies.

Things changed last year when City Atty. Carmen Trutanich began enforcing billboard ordinances and making it clear he would defend the city in court. In August, the City Council adopted a temporary ban on new signs while it waited to see what the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals would do. Now the court has put the city back in charge of its own landscape by upholding its discretion, through land-use legislation, to designate certain areas as appropriate for signage and other areas as sign-free.

That’s good news, but it’s also an end to months of relative quiet in the billboard wars. Now some members of the City Council are eager to approve one new exception after another in exchange for promises of community benefits such as new parks, or simply as an incentive to developers to bring in badly needed commercial projects with decent-paying jobs and new places for neighbors to shop.

The council should proceed with abundant caution. Litigious sign companies have shown that they are ready, willing and able to exploit the slightest fumbling in city lawmaking, or the merest hint of weakness in city resolve to defend itself, in an attempt to plant new advertising around town, legally or otherwise. They’re also not shy about using their commercial clout to entice politicians to see things their way. Council members should use Wednesday’s ruling as a roadmap for avoiding future problems, and — now that initial tension between the council and Trutanich’s office has somewhat abated — they should listen carefully to their lawyers’ advice.

They should also listen carefully to Los Angeles residents. Some council members say they represent neighborhoods that are begging for more big-city vibe and wouldn’t mind a few more carefully placed billboards. That may be. But there appear to be many more residents who resent their streets being turned into repositories of garish advertising come-ons.