Opinion: Bad billboard bills

Not all of Florida's legislators are as eager as Rep. David D. Russell Jr., R-Brooksville, to betray their constituents to the billboard lobby, but too many are willing to sell out someone else's if they can protect their own. The time-tested tactic of divide and conquer is working for the billboard cartel and its agents in the Legislature. The transportation package (SB 2056) of Sen. Jim Sebesta, R-St. Petersburg, cleared his own committee unanimously this week, but two more committees remain, however ineffectually, in its way. Russell's HB 1053 is only one step shy of the House floor.

The billboard section is cleverly worded to imply that it empowers communities to regulate billboards by negotiation. Cities and counties already have the authority to do that and a lot more -- and would lose most of that power if these bad bills become law. That includes Russell's home county of Hernando, where residents must feel deceived their state representative is trying to undermine the county's ordinance that bans new billboards and strictly regulates the upkeep of existing ones.

But legislators who know better are being bought off by various complicated takeout clauses for localities such as Polk County, Tampa and Jacksonville, where sign removal has been negotiated or is subject to pending litigation. One of these provisions might protect Pinellas County's amortization ordinance, but only if it's upheld in court. Should the county lose on any legal point, it would be unable to enact a new ordinance without paying the billboard cartel to take down its signs or agreeing to swap sign locations on the industry's terms.

These side deals would still leave most of Florida at the industry's mercy, including Orlando and any other community that doesn't already have a mature billboard amortization ordinance. One particularly insidious provision would forbid the Trust for Public Lands to remove a billboard from property it has bought for the city of Jacksonville, despite the existence of a cancellation-on-sale clause in the billboard lease.

A classic hypocrisy distinguishes both bills. The visual blight of billboards supposedly deserves protection as a medium of "commercial and noncommercial communication," yet the final section empowers the Department of Transportation and other agencies to bar fund solicitors -- whose constitutional rights are much clearer -- from welcome centers, wayside parks, rest areas and service plazas. The Hare Krishnas obviously haven't hired the right lobbyists.

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