Now, the city has three full time people working on the code-enforcement detail stopping illegal billboards. Unfortunately, San Franciscans who don’t want to be bombarded with billboards across the city-scape have a new problem to contend with… the billboard industry’s legal team.

As this article in today’s San Francisco Chronicle explains, although the city has issued citations in over 250 cases, almost none of the fines have been paid by the billboard owners.

According to city Planning Department officials, a three-person enforcement team has located more than 250 illegal billboards and sought fines against the company owners and landlords totaling about $1.5 million. Only $50,500 of that has been collected, however, in part because the majority of the fines are tied up in unresolved legal actions. “We’re trying to stop any new billboards from going up and finding the ones that have been put up without permits,” said Dan Sider, the city planner in charge of the program. “Outdoor advertising is a lucrative industry, so the companies are hiring very skilled lawyers who are waging legal challenges.” It didn’t take long for the outdoor advertising industry, which handles $7.2 billion in business each year, to file legal challenges. Two cases recently argued in Los Angeles federal district court may not bode well for San Francisco. In both cases – which are now pending at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals – the district courts ruled that restrictions on billboards are not enforceable because they violated the Constitution. In one case, the court ruled that Los Angeles created a double standard by restricting private advertising signs, but simultaneously sold ad space on bus shelters and other public places. “It’s a violation of the First Amendment if the city allows some signs, but not others without justification,” said Rex Heinke, a Los Angeles attorney, who is representing a company in one of the Los Angeles cases.

I guess we’ll have to see what the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (also located in San Francisco) has to say about this issue. Once again the business interests fall back on the First Amendment to purportedly protect their trampling on the public’s enjoyment of a blight-free public space. Of course, the First Amendment, as any grade school kid will tell you, is the right to free speech enshrined in the Constitution. However, the right is not absolute, but rather elastic. It applies absolutely to some speech and less so to others. The most protected is political speech, while commercial speech requires much less deference. It remains to be seen how much import the judges on the Ninth Circuit will attach to visual clutter…

The L.A. Times is reporting Clear Channel has its eye on 674 state owned digital billboards on California Highways. The billboards were installed to alert drivers to road hazards and for Amber Alerts providing “urgent bulletins in the most serious child-abduction cases.”

But now the state is listening to Clear Channel.

Apparently California needs money. In the Governor’s budget it says, “chronic underinvestment has increased congestion and has resulted in California having some of the most distressed highway and road conditions in the United States.”

Of course, this is the neo-liberal fantasy:

1. the government under-funds infrastructure
2. infrastructure falls apart
3. Conservatives claim that government can’t be trusted and we need private industry and competition!
4. Conservatives then make private, exclusive deals with corporations so they can sweep in to the rescue/for the profit.

I can’t imagine this proposal going very far, but the whining about being broke and the publicity that follows may be intended to prepare voters for a comparatively less disgusting option.

As argued in the L.A. Times story, yes it’s an eyesore, yes it might be dangerous to drivers, yes it will train people pay less attention to a sign designed to help abducted children and tell them about emergencies – thereby nearly nullifying it. But more important that that, it’s public space and public property that belongs to us, not corporations.

But perhaps you’re more fiscally minded. This is another bad deal made by politicians with advertising and marketing companies. (Politicians who are most likely being lobbied by and receiving campaign donations from Clear Channel.) Sen. George Runner (R-Lancaster) says the money will be used for highway repair and potentially may be “tens of millions of dollars.” The California Transportation Commission’s annual budget is $28,466,000,000.

Another drop in the bucket. Sorry Amber.

Thanks for the tip from reader Sam.