Signs of a problem

It’s possible to note two actions the City Council took earlier this month to control the spread of billboards and conclude that the matter is well in hand. After all, the council ordered billboard companies to pay for an inventory of all signs, legal and illegal. And it imposed a three-month moratorium on new billboards while it hammers out a comprehensive policy that will finally cover all the issues. Problem solved, right?

Wrong. These two actions are but the latest potshots between the council and the billboard industry and, increasingly, between the council and itself, a protracted contest that illuminates some of the more basic and exasperating aspects of Los Angeles political life. Elected leaders of other cities decide to ban billboards entirely, and the bans stick. A city can opt out of being a collection of giant advertising posters, TV screens and flashing come-ons, and instead preserve a livable look and feel.

Simple as such a ban is, Los Angeles hasn’t been able to pull it off. In 2002, the council “banned” new billboards, and at the same time ordered advertising companies to produce lists of their signs and pay for the city to inspect them. But the ordinance was peppered with so many exceptions and special favors that it was overturned in court, and a so-called settlement was actually a sign bonanza, allowing conversion of hundreds of conventional billboards to digital supergraphics. The advertising tail is so vigorously wagging the city dog that new regulations or settlements threaten to make L.A. a garish billboard free-for-all.

Earlier this year, the Planning Commission proposed a six-month suspension of new billboard approvals to buy the city time to get its act together, especially on digital displays. The council cut that time in half, to either (take your pick) spur city bureaucrats to speed up their work drafting an ordinance or to mollify billboard companies into not suing again.

In the meantime, individual council members still seek exceptions for projects in their districts. This multiuse project or that marquee development will only pencil out, the argument goes, with the extra revenue provided by a few well-placed digital billboards. So there must be an exception to any ban or moratorium. That’s the kind of thinking that got the city into this situation in the first place.

Los Angeles residents would be well within their rights to be nervous about the moratorium (more properly, the interim control ordinance). It could help the city finally get a handle on its billboard problem; it just as easily could wind up as the next chapter of the problem itself.