Clear Channel Outdoor lobbyist throwing a party for Delgadillo
The Four Seasons reception is drawing fire from anti-billboard activists, who question the city attorney's objectivity regarding outdoor-ad interests.
The billboard company known as Clear Channel Outdoor has long been a warrior at Los Angeles City Hall, playing legal hardball as it worked to protect a local advertising industry valued at more than $1 billion from new regulations.
The company sued Los Angeles in 2002, halting an inspection program that would have determined whether more than 10,000 billboards had proper permits. Four years later, Clear Channel won a legal settlement that allowed up to 420 of its billboards to be upgraded into digital signs.
On Friday, the veteran City Hall lobbyist who represented Clear Channel during that lawsuit will help throw a party for City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo, the man whose legal team represented the city throughout the billboard fight -- and who won office with considerable help from billboard interests.
The event is drawing fire from anti-billboard activists, who called the cocktail reception at the Four Seasons Hotel a fawning thank-you to Delgadillo -- and a symbol of the chummy relationships between city politicians, lobbyists and the billboard industry.
"How can he be independent?" asked Dennis Hathaway, a spokesman for the Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight. "It calls into question (Delgadillo's) objectivity in acting on behalf of the city on all these lawsuits."
The event, "An Evening in Honor of Rocky Delgadillo," will feature “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest, thetelevision and radio personality who announced a new agreement last week with Clear Channel regarding advertising on his radio program. Seacrest is on KIIS-FM (102.7), which is part of Clear Channel Radio.
Invitations were sent and RSVPs accepted by Ken Spiker and Associates, the firm that collected nearly $480,000 in city lobbying fees from Clear Channel Outdoor and its sister company, Clear Channel Airports, from 2003 through 2007, according to city documents.
Still, Ken Spiker Jr. said the event has no connection to Clear Channel or the fight over outdoor advertising. Spiker said he severed his ties with Clear Channel in mid-December. And he insisted that Seacrest is showing up to the Delgadillo event because he is friends with two other clients, not Clear Channel.
"Forty of my other clients will be there and 100 CEOs will be there, and none of them are affiliated with billboards," said Spiker, who described himself as a close friend of Delgadillo.
