City Hall's Billboard Double Standard: Hope You Like Vegas!

City Hall's Billboard Double Standard: Hope You Like Vegas! By Walter Moore, Candidate for Mayor of Los Angeles, WalterMooreForMayor.com September 15, 2008 Villaraigosa and the City Council routinely apply double standards when regulating businesses: one standard for major campaign contributors, and a second for everyone else. That, for example, is why City Hall gives tax breaks and subsidies to certain hotels downtown, but requires hotels near LAX to pay a higher minimum wage than any other businesses in the entire city. It is also why trucking companies -- including Mexican trucking companies -- can receive massive subsidies from the Port to buy new trucks, but independent owner-operators cannot. On September 10, 2008, the City Council approved another regulatory double standard that may wind up making it impossible for the City to regulate the location of electronic billboards throughout the city. The City Council decided to grant to Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) a right that other businesses -- including billboard companies -- do not have: the right to put electronic billboards right by the freeway downtown. Here's how the L.A. Times described it: "The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to sell signage rights for the L.A. Convention Center to the owner of Staples Center, a move that could allow dozens of billboards and video displays to sprout on a public facility along one of the city's busiest freeway interchanges. "The agreement grants the exclusive signage rights to Anschutz Entertainment Group, known as AEG, the company that is overseeing the adjacent $2.5-billion LA Live development. In exchange, AEG will pay the city at least $2 million a year over the next decade and also share a portion of the net advertising profits from the signs. "Council members said they were largely swayed by the stream of cash that the deal will deliver to the city at a time when the economic downturn has forced budget cuts and fee increases." Villaraigosa and the City Council, however, know, or should know, that the City cannot have one billboard standard for favored companies, and a second billboard standard for everyone else. You see, City Hall actually tried to do that before; a lawsuit ensued; and the United States District Court ruled, in 2006, that, as a result, the City's "Sign Ordinance violates the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and is unconstitutional as applied in this case." The Court zeroed in on the City's unfair double standard: "The City, on the one hand, enacted the Sign Ordinance for the express purpose of promoting traffic safety and eliminating visual clutter, while, on the other hand, awarding a large contract that permits its contractor to do precisely what its Ordinance prohibits. In short, the two operate at cross purposes." I bet you didn't know City Hall had managed to make the Sign Ordinance unconstitutional, did you? And remember: this was two years ago, in 2006. You may have read an article a few months ago with the great title, "Billboards Gone Wild," lambasting City Hall for entering into a settlement with billboard companies in a different case two years later. The gist of the article was that City Hall "gave away the store" by settling that lawsuit, and that billboard companies got away with murder, aesthetically speaking. The reporter however, apparently didn't know that City Hall's real mistake had come years earlier: City Hall, by trying to grant an exemption to one company, had lost the right to regulate any companies. Villaraigosa and the City Council, however, are making the same mistake all over again -- if indeed it is a mistake. Once Villaraigosa and the City Council let AEG erect "dozens of billboards and video displays . . . along one of the city's busiest freeway interchanges," how will they convince a court to uphold any city regulations limiting the placement of such signs along any street? The Daily News calls the deal with AEG a "skyline sellout" that will bring Vegas to downtown L.A. City Hall's latest double standard deal, however, could bring Vegas not just to downtown L.A., but to every street in the city. Hey, me, I love Vegas. But whether you love or hate electronic signs, we can all agree that our City's billboard regulations should result from a public debate about what would best serve the public interest. Instead, the career politicians at City Hall, by applying their unethical double standards, are forfeiting our legal ability to impose any regulations. If that's not a sign we need a new Mayor, what is?