Shining a bright light on a 'green mayor'
I had just finished talking to the mayor about the city's annoying billboards -- asking if he intends to do anything about them -- when I turned to a couple of his aides with a question:
Are there still roughly 4,000 illegal billboards out there?
"Probably more," said Matt Szabo, who serves as Antonio Villaraigosa's communications director.
You almost have to slap yourself in conversations about L.A.'s advertising orgy. Nothing sounds quite real. But you can't slap away these facts:
More than one-third of the 11,000 billboards polluting the city were illegally erected.
Nobody seems to know when / how / if anyone can do anything about it.
Roughly 900 billboards across the city could soon be converted from conventional to Blade Runner digital, lighting up your street or bedroom with a 50,000-watt flash. That's because city officials have caved in to a powerful billboard industry that loves making campaign donations to certain people.
And, judging by the reaction to my Sunday column on the subject, the natives are restless.
"What an eyesore!" wrote West Los Angeles resident Robert Nellis. From his home, he has a great view of a new digital billboard on Barrington Avenue, with its "bright lights changing like a Vegas show."
"I already am beginning to feel as if I am living in some degraded future-world with video screens everywhere assaulting me with propaganda," wrote Jerry Treiman of Woodland Hills.
Many readers wondered how a billboard could be converted from paper to plasma -- changing the character of an entire neighborhood -- without any notification or neighborhood hearing.
Fair question; easy answer.
In 2006, City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo settled a lawsuit by, among other things, offering the billboard industry the right to convert those nearly 900 billboards to digital. Delgadillo, who had received nearly $500,000 worth of free advertising from the industry during his campaign for office, took the deal to the City Council and mayor, and they unanimously approved it.
Local public officials have let billboard companies have their way so often, it's now difficult to legally enforce the city's own rules and regulations.
Last week, Councilman Jack Weiss' office wanted records of planned digital conversions in his district, so he could try to prevent some of them if neighbors objected.
Sounds simple enough, right?
