Los Angeles city planning officials Thursday recommended a six-month moratorium on new billboards, intended to give the city enough time to replace the weak, ineffective outdoor advertising restrictions that have allowed billboards to sprout almost unabated across the Los Angeles skyline.
The Planning Commission's proposed moratorium now goes before the City Council. City officials have struggled for years to regulate the billboard industry even as the placement of the oversized signs has infuriated many in Los Angeles neighborhoods. So far, the industry has successfully used the courts to shred city restrictions on where such signs can be placed, arguing the rules are unfair and inconsistent.
Council members already are reviewing ways to stem conversion of standard billboards into digital displays and impose limits on multistory "super graphics" stretched across buildings. They also are trying to determine how many billboards currently exist in the city -- both legally and illegally -- and impose permit and inspection fees on the outdoor signs.
Planning Commissioner Michael K. Woo, who proposed the moratorium, said the measure recommended Thursday would be a "very effective step to stopping" the proliferation of signs, especially digital displays, while the council crafts a permanent and coherent citywide billboard policy. The temporary ban can be extended in three-month increments and also would prohibit billboards from being modified to digital.
The proposal exempts a handful of billboards that have received building permits, as well as 26 super-graphics that also have received city approval. The city attorney's office had warned the commission that exempting the supergraphics could make the moratorium vulnerable to legal challenge.
Dennis Hathaway of the Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight, who has advocated a crackdown on billboards in Los Angeles, said he was happy to see the commission recommend the temporary ban. But he also expressed concern that the exemptions would "undercut the city's ability to enforce it."
Representatives of outdoor advertising companies as well as some major local developers argued against the moratorium, saying that many projects, including the LA Live entertainment district in downtown Los Angeles, rely on revenue from outdoor advertising to help make them economically sustainable.
"We just think the city is being extremely shortsighted," William F. Delvac of Latham & Watkins, representing LA Live developer AEG Corp., told the commission.
