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State lobbies for rebuilt billboards

TALLAHASSEE - The string of hurricanes that tore through Florida this summer ravaged billboards in every corner of the state, and the industry is eager to rebuild them.

But hundreds can't be rebuilt because of state and federal laws aimed at slowly eliminating older billboards from the landscape.

Undaunted, the outdoor advertising industry wants a special hurricane exemption and has recruited a powerful ally: Gov. Jeb Bush.

Florida transportation officials spent the past week lobbying their federal counterparts in Washington to allow destroyed signs to be rebuilt.

State officials say the widespread devastation to the industry persuaded them to take up its cause. Bush asked state officials to work with federal transportation officials to find a solution, a Bush spokesman said.

Their action has infuriated antibillboard groups, who say residents whose homes were condemned because of hurricane damage haven't sought exemptions from building codes. They say this is the latest example of the political clout of the outdoor advertising industry, which has poured tens of thousands of dollars into state campaigns in the past few years.

The Florida League of Cities asked Bush not to support billboard waivers.

Billboard companies say they are merely seeking the same kind of help the state offered other hard-hit industries, such as agriculture and insurance, in the aftermath of Florida's four hurricanes, and that allowing the signs to be rebuilt will help rebuild the state's economy.

"We would like to be treated like other businesses and helped back on the road," said Florida Outdoor Advertising Association spokeswoman April Herrle.

"Like so many other businesses and homes in Florida, the outdoor advertising industry has been hard hit by the storms," she said.

The issue is the latest skirmish in a struggle that stretches back almost 40 years.

In 1965, Lady Bird Johnson, former President Lyndon B. Johnson's wife, spearheaded passage of the Highway Beautification Act, which aimed to remove billboards and junkyards that obscured the countryside. That law set new standards for the construction and placement of billboards along federal and state highways. It also allowed states and local communities to enact even stricter guidelines for the billboard industry.

Many older signs that don't meet the standards of state or federal law, such as height or spacing requirements, have been refurbished over the years.

The law left it up to states, however, to define what "destroyed" means. California, for example, says a sign is destroyed if it hasn't been rebuilt within two weeks.

Florida took a harder line: An older billboard is considered destroyed when at least 50 percent of its supports have been damaged. State officials estimate that hundreds of signs built before the adoption of the Highway Beautification Act suffered at least 50 percent damage from the hurricanes.

According to Florida TaxWatch, a Tallahassee-based government watchdog group that has sided with the billboards in this fight, not allowing the signs to be rebuilt will cost the state $27-million a year in lost revenue and eliminate 870 jobs.

Small businesses will be hit especially hard because they rely more heavily than bigger businesses on cheaper billboard advertising to reach customers, according to TaxWatch. The organization is urging federal transportation officials to grant the exception.

"The sooner that the industry can recover from these most unfortunate natural disasters, the better off will be Florida citizens, the business community and the state's economy overall," wrote TaxWatch senior research analyst Necati Aydin.

It's those economic figures, and the severity of the widespread hurricane damage, that persuaded state transportation officials to grant the billboard industry's request for mediation with Washington.

"We need to understand what our options are," said Ken Towcimak, who runs the Florida Department of Transportation's right-of-way office.

"We've been aware that other states interpret the rule differently," Towcimak said.

Towcimak said that even if federal officials approve the request to allow the signs to be rebuilt, it won't affect local ordinances approved by local governments, including St. Petersburg and Clearwater, that have tougher restrictions. Those two cities recently were handed a victory by the U.S. Supreme Court when it refused to hear a Georgia company's lawsuits challenging their billboard ordinances.

"We can't issue a permit at all until a local government issues a permit," Towcimak said.

Even so, cities and municipalities are urging the state to forgo the waiver.

"It's against the law to replace these destroyed, nonconforming billboards because they do not comply with current standards. They just can't do that," said Clay Ford, president of the Florida League of Cities and mayor pro tem of Gulf Breeze.

But local beautification ordinances aren't the issue, Jonson said. The point is, he said, government is helping an industry that Congress wanted to rein in almost 40 years ago. Scenic America, the national arm of Citizens for a Scenic Florida, says the number of billboards along America's highways has increased by more than a third since the Highway Beautification Act was adopted.

Florida's four hurricanes should have permanently taken at least several hundred of those signs off the roadways, but they won't if the state succeeds in getting this exemption, Jonson said.

"We've had a lot of billboards blown down, and a lot of them are still there," Jonson said.

"The Florida Outdoor Advertising Association used to say the Highway Beautification Act was a law that worked, but now they're crying foul," Jonson said.