A year ago, LA was in the unpleasant position of having opened the floodgates to digital billboards, supergraphics and freeway-facing signs.
There were 11,000 off-site billboards, more than a third illegal, and visual blight from signage was everywhere — the result of poorly crafted legislation, miserable enforcement and the corrupting influence of money on City Hall politicians.
On Wednesday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals restored a measure of law and order by overturning a lower court ruling and finding the city’s bans on freeway facing signs and supergraphics.
There were 11,000 off-site billboards, more than a third illegal, and
visual blight from signage was everywhere — the result of poorly
crafted legislation, miserable enforcement and the corrupting influence
of money on City Hall politicians.
The key issues were the free speech rights of billboard companies and the exceptions granted by city officials that allowed Staples Center and a few others to use supergraphics and digital signs that face freeways, creating potential traffic hazards,
In a 25-page ruling (worldwiderush.pdf), the appeals court in a ruling written by Judge Kim Wardlaw and supported unanimously by Judges Stephen Reinhardt and Stephen Trott, the court reversed District Court Judge Audrey Collins ruling against the city and the contempt of court finding.
“The City’s exceptions to the Freeway Facing Sign Ban do not undermine the City’s interests in aesthetics and safety,” the court ruled. “Indeed, the exceptions were made for the express purpose of advancing those very interests. Allowing billboards at the Staples Center was an important element of a project to remove’ blight and dangerous conditions from downtown Los Angeles. Similarly, the Fifteenth Street SUD (special use district) was an outgrowth of the City’s efforts to improve traffic flow, and thereby safety, on Santa Monica Boulevard.
“Not only did the agreement to allow signs in the Fifteenth Street SUD advance that project, it also resulted in a net reduction of billboards inthe City. Ironically, the most significant denigration to the City’s interests in traffic safety and aesthetics might result, not from allowing the freeway facing billboards at the StaplesCenter and in the Fifteenth Street SUD but instead from strict adherence to the Freeway Facing Sign Ban, which might have severely hampered, if not completely defeated, both projects.”
Frankly, I think the court gave the city the benefit of a lot of doubts.
But after a long series of legal defeats and a seemingly unenforceable sign ordinance when he took office less than a year ago, City Attorney Carmen “Nuch” Trutanich and his team deserve a lot of the credit. Even his critics ought to be able to acknowledge that.
[4] The district court took an all-or-nothing approach to its
constitutional analysis of the Freeway Facing Sign Ban, stating that to
“preserv[e] even one freeway-facing sign…undermines the City’s stated
interests in traffic safety and aesthetics…
His team, led by
top assistant Jane Usher who crusaded for a crackdown on billboards as
president of the Planning Commission before resigning in protest to what
was going on, drafted a tough ordinance and got it enacted by a
reluctant City Council.
In defending the new ordinance and even
the old one in this case, the City Attorney’s office is wracking up a
series of court victories that give LA control over signage for the
first time in decades.
On the free speech issue, the appellate
court said:
“The city reasonably may have concluded that, on
balance, safer and more attractive thoroughfares would result from
renovations to Santa Monica Boulevard and a reduction in the City’s
total number of billboards, even if this required installation of some
freeway facing billboards along Fifteenth Street. The City also
reasonably may have concluded that the benefits of redeveloping and
attracting people to an otherwise dangerous and blighted downtown area
outweighed the harm of additional freeway facing billboards restricted
to that area…
“The City submitted a convincing rationale –
which is entirely consistent with its asserted gov-
ernmental
interest — for exempting some freeway facing signs from its Ban…the
City’s decision to permit some freeway facing billboards at the Staples
Center and in the Fifteenth Street SUD does not break the link between
the Freeway Facing Sign Ban and the City’s objectives in traffic safety
and aesthetics.”
The court also threw out the argument that the
“Supergraphic and Off-Site Sign Bans were unconstitutional prior
restraints on speech because their exceptions impermissibly vest the
City Council with unbridled discretion to select among speakers on the
basis of content. “
“This legal conclusion was erroneous,
however, because the prior restraint doctrine does not apply to the
legislative function at issue here. The exceptions to the Supergraphic
and Off-Site Sign Bans are rooted in the City Council’s legislative
discretion, not its discretion to make
executive decisions as part of
the LAMC’s regulatory scheme. This distinction makes all the
difference.”
So while the billboard companies and the people they
benefit may harangue about Trutanich’s aggressive enforcement of the
law, including the arrests of company executives, he has the law on his
side now so you can expect a lot tougher enforcement in the months
ahead.
Hate to burst your bubble, but all this means is that the City Council now sees a new potential windfall of campaign contributions from a Billboard Industry that has now go to them with hat in hand for permits and exemptions.
Reyes, as head of the PLUM Committee, is already drooling with palms out at his good fortune.
Looks like Jan Perry won.
Uh, the courts sided WITH Jan Perry, Staples and AEG and specifically said that allowing them their billboard was PROTECTING the rest of the city from rampant billboard blight… in other words (OR in EXACTLY the correct words) TRUTANICH GOT A SLAP IN THE FACE AND PERRY, AEG AND THE CITY COUNCIL WON.
HOW ON EARTH DO YOU EVEN TRY TO SPIN THAT OTHERWISE?
If Nuch really wants to prove is far from the clowns in city council he needs to FILE on the 9 students from UCLA who protested without a permit and shut down Wilshire Blvd. in Westwood. Businesses lost thousands of dollars, an ambulance couldn’t get through to hospital, CHP, LAPD, Sheriff and Federal police all worked to get them off the street. Students had ATTORNEYS with them to make sure law enforcement didn’t do anything wrong. Rumor has it the Mayor is trying them off. City Attorney better file and quickly or else all hell will break loose. This was lawlessness and needs to be dealt with. Let’s see if NUCH does what the Mayor says or what the law says he should do and FILE
Nuch once again shows Jack Weiss, Rocky Delgadillo, and law school dropout Antonio Villaraigosa what a REAL LAWYER for the City can do. Thank you Nuch. A little less blight is a step in the right direction. Now there is the matter of neighborhood code enforcement.
Bravo to the three judges for killing the billboards and to Nuch for facing down the big money, selfish outdoor billboard guys!
The free speech argument was bogus b.s.
Certainly, plenty of precedent has been set by other cities that have banned these disgusting, blighting, annoying, dangerous to traffic and a fire hazard as declared by LAFD, blighting billboards and super graphics, making us look like a third world on-our-way-to-fourth-world city status.
If Vegas wants to crap up their city and make it look like tacky glitz on steroids, it can stay in Vegas!
Interesting that Nuch is spending a lot of time cleaning up the bullshit city council passed and allowed. He’s going after the billboards that are making the city look like Las Vegas. He’s also going after all the marijuana shops the idiots on council allowed in the city. There are over 17 alone on one strip of the Venice Boardwalk. The weirdo Rosendahl kept saying these help sick people. In reality it attracts the worst low lives. City council wants to decrease his budget so he doesn’t have enough attorneys to do the work.
Thank you Michael Bostrom for all your work on the billboard case. You are an invaluable player on Nuch’s team.
While Los Angeles City Attorney is taking care of city business, it appears LA Mayor is out for pleasure.
LA Mayor Scores Big on Lakers Tickets
Wednesday, 26 May 2010
Reporter: John Schwada
MY FOX LA
Los Angeles – Mayor Villaraigosa has been seen at several Lakers playoff games, which in itself isn’t a big deal… But what may be a big deal is how he is scoring those hot courtside tickets.
When Villaraigosa goes to Lakers game, he gets attention on television and even on youtube, but what has our attention is that his seats are worth well over two-thousand bucks each and he says he gets the tickets for free.
John Schwada has more in this video report.
MyFoxLA
http://www.myfoxla.com/dpp/news/local/la-mayor-scores-big-on-lakers-tickets-20100526
We should not blame Antonio for enjoying $1000 bottle wines and $2000 Lakers tickets, paid by special interests, while he can. 2013 is around the corner.
I definitely understand how tenants could be upset at supergraphics on the sides of buildings that obscure their window views. I also could see how residents could be upset by the digital graphics that shine in their windows at night. Finally, I could see how everyone could generally be upset by signs that are put up without paying the proper fees/taxes etc (possibly staying up by lining some politician’s pockets) and about signs that obstruct views or significantly distract drivers (although I’m dubious here, especially with most of LA’s drivers looking down at their phones trying to text and drive).
Nevertheless, I don’t get the huge outcry about billboard “blight.” I think a lot of these signs are attractive, they liven up the areas where they are located, and, if they help some building owners cover costs and raise some revenues for the city (either in sign taxes or in higher property values/incomes), all the better. For example, the Westwood Medical Building supergraphic is always quite interesting to look at from Wilshire. Would it be more asthetically pleasing if it was a plain grey wall on a tall office building (there are no windows on that side because the developer realized that a medical building with windows overlooking the VA cemetary probably wouldn’t play well)? Would you be happier if they painted a pretty design on the wall as long as it was not part of the sale of some product?
So, I guess the question is whether this is a place/form/permit issue or whether this is like the controversy over advertising in sports. Nascar and soccer enthusiasts are quite comfortable seeing ads adorning the uniforms of their players, while many purists in baseball, football, and basketball complain about signs around the court/field and would die if the ads appeared on uniforms. If this is about place/form/permitting, then by all means regulate and enforce the regulation, while still allowing billboards to exist. If this is about asthetics alone, though, then it’s a matter of taste and I think you have to move to the desert to get your preferred state of nature.
One of the most ignorant comments is Ed Reyes in LA Times on the billboard issue “There are places that want to feel urbanized. There are places that want activity and motion. The people there are ready for new billboards”. Since when did billboards equal urbanization. Can he name one community other than billboard companies and union members that have lined the Council’s pockets, clamoring for billboards. Such idiotic thinking is to be expected from Wesson and Hahn, but frightening coming from the Chair of PLUM, and a man who pretends to be an urban planner.
The operative word about Reyes as an urban planner is “pretend.” I hear he got fired when he actually worked in that capacity.
Ed Reyes is one of the dumbest on council. I take that back, he’s tied with Janice Hahn. Poor Ed has never gotten out of the barrio cause he thinks you need a passport to travel to Arizona. That stupid statement was all over the national news when council voted to boycott Arizona. There’s a fun piece making fun of Janice Hahn, Ron’s girl LOL!!! in Weekly. Seems everyone has the number of the clowns on council and Mayor.
“The key issues were…the exemptions by city officials that allowed Staples Center and a few others to use supergraphics…”
This says in so many words that Trutanich was WRONG and AEG was RIGHT – that Trtuanich’s threatening to jail Perry and AEG and their top officials, lawyer AND the city planning official who sided with them was wrong and downright illegal. Probably intimidation of an official as she tried to do her job. AEG called it “bullying” along with Trutanich’s shakedown of them for $6 million for Jackson memorial expenses, which he also has to date been unable to subtantiate.
ALSO this ban which was upheld was crafted way BEFORE Trutanich tool office, but he gets “credit” for it anyway, of course, in your world. (And in Zahniser’s LA Times piece, because it’s been clear for a long time that he is in essence the “reporting” arms of their editorial dept., mainly Jim Newton and Rob Greene who admit their biases.)
In FACT, Trutanich and Usher kept insisting including through their campaign, that ANY exemptions just as were specifically allowed here, negate ALL attempts to regulate billboards: NOT TRUE. That was based on Collins’ earlier and overturned ruling, NOT The law or logic.
YOUR bias for Trutanich is of course expected WHATEVER he does but Zahniser’s writing shows again why the Times is a national joke.
And Mary, you are just a pathetic human with no life.
To 2:29 p.m. Not true and of no relevance today.
To May 27, 2010 4:36 PM,
Your argument doesn’t make sense. First Jan Perry legislatively overruled Trutanich in a public way.
Jan Perry doesn’t understand how her actions on both the Jackson Funeral and on AEG’s override put the City of LA in a disadvantageous position.
Whether it is a private or a public entity, the actions of employees, officers, and elected officials can change the outcome of legal challenges exposing the entity to damages.
The real test of Trutanich would have been if Jan Perry followed the City Attorney’s advice and then let him defend his actions in court.
Perry acts like this is her personal money, not the taxpayers.
On another note, I find it ironic that you chose to criticize the Times in this blog. Many of the conservative types also criticize the Times for being biased in a liberal direction (I think that those criticisms are wrong).
Either you are tying to play on that or you are really pissed off at the good job Zahniser is doing in exposing the corruption of the City Council and Mayor.
For once, LA Slimes has an editorial with the much deserved praise for Trutanich, and a warning to the Council not to approve one exception after another to allow billboards as they are eagerly waiting to do.
As for Wesson’s ballot measure to tax billboards, it is nothing more than a ploy to plaster the city with billboards under the guise of generating revenues. The community needs to be vigilant in not allowing this crap of a City Council in despoiling our urban landscape and undoing the hard work of the City Attorney.
I could see why Wesson would want to tax billboards. He needs to replace the millions he’s “giving away” to developers of his mid city project, who will be able to use what should have been property taxes to instead pay off their loans.
I could see why Wesson would want to tax billboards. He needs to replace the millions he’s “giving away” to developers of his mid city project, who will be able to use what should have been property taxes to instead pay off their loans. Heh, I just bought a property, where can I sign up for that sweet deal?
He also needs to collect money from billboard companies for his Council rerun and private slush fund. Do we have any candidates in CD 10 willing to run against this weasel.
Don’t forget Wesson also gave away $19.2 million to CIM.
Excellent job.
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