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While most owners have complied with the rules, some "stragglers'' pose a problem for enforcers: "What do we do now?''
By JEFFREY S. SOLOCHEK
© St. Petersburg Times, published December 19, 2000
BROOKSVILLE -- As he prepared to enforce Hernando County's new billboard rules last spring, Code Enforcement Director Frank McDowell III had no idea what to expect.
His officers needed to gather information such as size and height for 289 signs, contact each owner, collect registration fees and tag each billboard. Outdoor advertising industry leaders raised a ruckus while county commissioners drew up the ordinance and McDowell did not know how they would react to the result.
The Oct. 4 registration deadline passed without incident, and the owners of 281 of the signs had paid the $125-per-face fee. No company has applied to put up new billboards.
"The program has been a success," a pleased McDowell said. "We've just got a couple of stragglers out there."
Those few unresponsive sign owners, however, have begun to pose a problem for the county: To strictly follow the commission's intent, the county was to immediately remove the unrecorded billboards.
"The ordinance was designed specifically to stop the construction of billboards and to clear out billboards owned by people who do not follow the ordinance," said Paul Sullivan, the former county commissioner who guided the issue to approval in April. "There is no constitutional right to make money off of someone else's air space. The county should do what they need to do."
About a week ago, McDowell turned to the county's Legal Department, which determined that removing an unregistered billboard is not as simple as driving a bulldozer to the site and tearing down the sign.
"We still have the Bill of Rights of the Constitution, which protects private property owners," Assistant County Attorney Kent Weissinger said.
Going onto private property without a court order is not advisable, Weissinger said. In a Dec. 12 memo, he told code enforcement officials to gather as much information as possible about the owners of non-compliant billboards to help build a case for future action.
He also asked for details about Pasco County's enforcement decisions, because Hernando based its ordinance largely on Pasco's rules.
"Not to say we're going to do it exactly the same," Weissinger said. "I just want to be sure before I advise our code enforcement officers of the next course of action, we learn what Pasco County wants to do."
That answer is unsettled.
Lamar Outdoor Advertising Co. has sued Pasco over the billboard ordinance, and all options are under review, said Barbara Wilhite, the county's chief assistant attorney. She planned to present the situation to her commissioners.
"I don't know yet" how Pasco will deal with challenges, Wilhite said. "But I'll know in the next few weeks."
Part of Lamar's lawsuit could affect the Hernando regulations. Specifically, the company alleged that Pasco's registration fee is double taxation because billboard owners already are charged a tangible tax.
The company, which has 59 sign faces in Hernando County, paid its registration fees here under protest, as did all other owners who paid. Like the others, Lamar disagreed with the fees, general manager Scott Polinek explained.
"We're taking into consideration whether they are exorbitant," Polinek said. "Compared to other counties, they are."
Lamar officials are assessing the situation and hope to sit down with county officials in Brooksville to talk about arriving at a "fair fee," he said.
The firm took a similar approach before suing Pasco, which did not budge on its fee structure, Wilhite said.
McDowell sounded a conciliatory note, even while he defended the county's fees as justified to cover the cost of the new regulation effort. Any billboard company can bring its ideas to the table at any time, he said.
"If they bring forth some good criteria that would justify us lowering the fees, we'll sit and talk to them," McDowell said.
Eller Media Co. asked for similar conversations in a letter to the county.
"Our concern is based upon a series of factors which include the apparent absence of a sufficient relationship between the regulatory goal and the administrative costs incident therein," wrote S. Wayne Mock, president of the company's Florida region.
That meeting has not occurred.
Hernando County commissioners banned all new billboards and placed strict regulations on existing ones in April, despite a recommendation against the new ordinance by the county Planning and Zoning Commission. The action came against a 35-year backdrop of attempts to get rid of billboards.
In 1965, Lady Bird Johnson won approval of the Highway Beautification Act, which aimed to remove billboards and junkyards that obscured the countryside. This year, Missouri voters narrowly defeated a referendum that would have banned all new billboards and stopped the removal or trimming of any tree or vegetation on a public right of way to clear space for billboards.
Polinek figured that whatever happens in Hernando County, this battle will continue nationally.
"We feel we are an integral part of the state economy," he said. "You have folks who are more environmentally sensitive than others. They are typically the type of folks who combat outdoor advertising. But you have those types of folks in every industry."