[Durham INC] "Compromise" billboard bill gives too much to industry (Durham News)

[John Schelp]

Column: Compromise billboard bill gives too much to industry
By John Schelp, Durham News, 01 May 2011

Although a provision overriding local restrictions on electronic billboards was dropped, major problems remain in a substitute billboard bill approved on Wednesday by the state Senate Transportation Committee. Citizens need to continue their advocacy.

The new industry measure (Senate Bill 183) will dramatically increase the cutting area currently allowed around billboards. It explicitly overrides local ordinances on vegetation control. And, by not recognizing the validity of local ordinances that regulate billboards, it may yet achieve the industry's objectives of overriding local controls on electronic billboards. The override will occur in the courts, but the effect will be the same as if the originally proposed statute had been passed.

For trees and bushes around billboards, Department of Transportation regulations already allow removal of 250 feet of trees and vegetation from each billboard face. That is more than a half-acre of trees and vegetation for a double-sided billboard. The substitute bill makes that 340 feet in cities and 380 feet in counties. This so-called "compromise" is only slightly less than the 400 feet the industry first requested.

A recent poll by the N.C. League of Conservation Voters showed that more than 80 percent of North Carolina citizens, and a large majority of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, oppose removing more trees to increase visibility of billboards. How is the legislature taking these views into account when it increases tree removal by such dramatic amounts?

Additional tree cutting exposes industries, heavy equipment rental companies, storage and warehouse facilities and railroad tracks to passing motorists. The loss of trees may also harm residential areas, especially apartment buildings, that are sometimes located near highways, and that depend on these trees as a visual buffer from the highway.

North Carolina's trees contribute to the state's economy. Not only do they clean our air and water, many tourists see North Carolina as a green and leafy place to visit. Our state has a $17 billion tourism industry. Is it worth losing any of that just so out-of-state billboard companies can take more money home?

This compromise bill fails to explicitly recognize the validity of local government controls on billboards. Legislators appear to be relieved that the industry has backed down from its demand that the bill include an override of local controls on electronic billboards. However, DOT regulations explicitly allow electronic billboards at 1,000 foot intervals - more than 10 digital billboards per mile (along both sides of a highway). Those regulations are not undone by this measure - and they create confusion, which the industry will exploit in the courts.

In lawsuits the billboard industry repeatedly brings against local governments, the companies have argued that DOT regulations supersede local government regulations, and make them invalid. The industry recently has won a number of these battles. Towns, cities, and counties that have been sued over the years include Asheville, Bessemer City, Cary, Charlotte, Currituck County, Durham, Fayetteville, Gastonia, Henderson County, Hendersonville, Johnston County, King, Mocksville, Monroe, Nags Head, Pinehurst, Raleigh, Southern Pines, Stanly County, Waynesville, Wilmington, Wilson, and Winston-Salem. Millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent defending these lawsuits.

The compromise bill gives the industry way too much. It dramatically increases destruction of trees, and it does not help cities and counties by clarifying that their local regulations on billboards are, in fact, valid.

Unless the so-called compromise bill further reduces the tree removal area, and clearly establishes the validity of local controls on billboards, citizens and local governments will realize, too late, that the billboard industry's measure has undermined the protections we already have in place. North Carolinians will be left with more big, bright billboards blinking 10,000 ads a day, near our homes, neighborhoods and places of worship. We'll be driving past stretches of warehouses and factories - instead of trees and woods. (Just compare I-40 in the Triangle to some of the interstates in the Triad.)

Citizens who would like to learn more about the billboard industry's measure can visit a new website, www.savetheview.org, find your legislators, and make your voices heard.


Source: http://www.thedurhamnews.com/2011/05/01/206551/compromise-billboard-bill-gives.html