THE BILLBOARDS ARE BACK
Steif, William
The billboards are back And so are the junkyards William Steif When President Carter signed a highway bill last November, he doomed Lady Bird Johnson's chief contribution to her husband's "Great...
...Most of the signs that have come down over the years since the 1965 law went into effect have been the "illegals" scrapped under state powers...
...The billboard industry, which grossed well over $500 million last year and which has shaken out from many small firms in the mid-1960s to a business dominated by a few large conglomerates today, is delighted to keep Lady Bird's law in place...
...The other major billboard lobby is the Roadside Business Association, primarily representing rural sign interests...
...And yet the 1965 law remains on the books, with the nation paying lip-service to controls on billboards and junkyards...
...Many signs simply were declared "illegal" and could be torn down without compensation to owners...
...The companion program to screen, relocate, or remove junkyards has moved even more slowly than billboard removal...
...There are a million miles of such roads in the nation...
...Jackson was behind an amendment in the bill Carter signed in November to lessen the law's ban on electronic billboards...
...Congress has been squeezing the billboard and junkyard-removal branch's budget, so that this year there is only $13.1 million for its work...
...Wright is now the Democratic majority leader...
...It took years for the state laws to be changed to conform with the Federal billboard rules, but they finally were...
...That is because, under last November's amendments, at least 250,000 billboards are added to the 200,000 for which the Federal Government must compensate owners if the billboards are removed...
...Almost half of that goes to provide "bonus" payments to twenty-three states that agreed to billboard controls on the Interstate system before the 1965 law was enacted...
...Present Federal liability for removing these billboards is estimated at $ 1.3 billion...
...Until mid-1974, he was chief of the Federal Highway Administration's scenic enhancement division, which was supposed to control billboards...
...The tourist industry pressured the billboard industry, which pressured county and state officials for the billboard permits...
...By contrast, in 1978 only 13,000 signs came down under the Federal compensation program, and in fiscal 1979 only about 2,000 will come down...
...Electronic billboards — like giant, flashing television commercials along the nation's highways — may be the Ultima Thule of the nation's billboard industry, but they hardly jibe with what Lady Bird Johnson was thinking of in 1965...
...And the junkyard program is dead, left without legislative authorization...
...The new Federal legislation also adds a curious wrinkle to constitutional law: It overrides state and local billboard-zoning controls on all Federal-aid highways...
...but on secondary and urban Federal-aid highways, not covered until last November by law, compensation averages about $5,000 per billboard...
...Georgia is a test case...
...Compensation on Interstate and primary roads now averages about $2,000 per billboard...
...The industry is well-connected on Capitol Hill, especially with the public works committees of the Senate and House...
...Massachusetts recently paid more than $ 1 million to owners of thirteen billboards removed in the Boston area under state law...
...That meant cities, counties, and states could zone areas commercial or industrial and control signs as they wanted...
...He retired and by the end of 1974 had been hired to "consult" on local zoning matters by the OAAA...
...The biggest is National Advertising, a subsidiary of the 3M Co., with at least 50,000 billboards...
...The highways were and are mostly paid for by Federal funds but built by state engineers...
...Pennsylvania's legislature is considering a bill that permits the state to preempt local zoning which restricts billboards...
...That is the effect of amendments to the 1965 law included in the highway bill Carter signed...
...When Representative James C. Wright, Texas Democrat, was a member of the House Public Works Committee, he worked feverishly to water down Lady Bird's billboard-control law and set up a "commission" that was supposed to recommend changes in the 1965 law...
...Adding the 250,000-plus signs in commercial and industrial zones to the compensation rolls would not only pinch the Federal treasury but also hurt many state treasuries...
...After thirteen years of controversy, billboard company lobbying and budget pressures not only have brought the sign-removal program to a virtual halt, but also threaten to reverse the trend so that more signs may spring up along the roads...
...The bill would enable signs to proliferate — and the Federal Government evidently will do nothing about it...
...But the Carter Administration has gone a step further, and now seems to be saying that it is perfectly all right to erect new billboards along the Interstate system...
...Under the 1965 law, the Federal Government was to put up 75 per cent of the funds needed to compensate owners for "non-conforming" signs on Interstate and primary highways, and the states 25 per cent...
...This phony zoning — phony because there is so little commerce or industry in the two largely rural counties — then allowed local officials to issue billboard permits...
...Second is Foster & Kleiser, a subsidiary of the Metromedia television chain, and third is the outdoor advertising division of Combined Communications, a media conglomerate recently purchased by the Gannett Company, which owns seventy-nine daily newspapers...
...Behind OAAA and RBA are a few major companies...
...The industry investment is now protected by the law...
...That was the Highway Beautification Act of 1965, designed to remove billboards and junkyards from the 42,000-mile Interstate Highway System and the 300,000-mile primary highway system...
...The Federal Highway Administration's chiefs have overruled lower-echelon officials and permitted construction of at least fifty-six new billboards along a stretch of Interstate 95 in southern Georgia, and possibly double that number...
...Mclnturff, a lawyer and former FBI man, is the guru of the industry...
...The big billboard companies have an advantage often unperceived by outsiders: They do a lot of business with politicians, and politicians are eager to curry their favor, for billboards are a favorite — and cheap — election medium...
...When this was brought to the attention of Karl S. Bowers, head of the Federal Highway Administration, he decided the Georgia billboards probably violated the law "but not to the extent that they should be sanctioned____I wouldn't want to characterize this as abuse...
...force billboard and junkyard controls...
...Under the penurious funding Congress has been allowing the billboard-control branch of the Federal Highway Administration, it would take more than a century to buy up all the billboards...
...In those days some people, at least, still recalled the late Ogden Nash's prophetic lines: / think that I shall never see A billboard lovely as a tree...
...The billboard companies' sales have been rising about 20 per cent annually, and many of the companies operate with profit margins well over 20 per cent...
...Nine 1-95 interchanges in the state's two southernmost counties were provided with commercial zoning of about 750 acres per interchange...
...Their "bonuses" are 0.5 per cent of annual Interstate construction costs...
...That means that if the billboard industry can lobby successfully at the local level, the Federal Government won't interfere...
...Perhaps, unless the billboards fall, I'll never see a tree at all...
...Carter agreed, over the protest, of Transportation Secretary Brock Adams, and that?s the way his budget went to Congress...
...That bill has been checked with George Mclnturff, "environmental consultant" of the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, and has received his blessing...
...It costs about $37,000 to deal with the average junkyard...
...The billboards are back And so are the junkyards William Steif When President Carter signed a highway bill last November, he doomed Lady Bird Johnson's chief contribution to her husband's "Great Society...
...A result of this will be to scrap all enforcement action under the 1965 law...
...Also under the 1965 law, commercial and industrial zones were exempted from the Federal law so far as billboard controls went...
...Senator Jennings Randolph, the West Virginia Democrat who heads the Senate Public Works Committee, votes with the billboard industry, and Senator Henry M. Jackson, Washington Democrat, is another influential friend...
...The triumph of the billboard lobby has been so complete that the White House's Office of Management and Budget recommended no funds be allocated in the President's budget for fiscal 1980, starting October 1, for the branch of the Federal Highway Administration which is supposed to enWilliam Steif is a Washington correspondent for the Scripps-Howard newspapers...
...On the other hand, if environmentalists who want billboard controls win a local fight, they could lose at a higher governmental level...
Vol. 43 • June 1979 • No. 6
