A divided Los Angeles Planning Commission failed to overhaul the city's billboard law Wednesday, with some members saying a proposed sign ordinance grants too many exceptions to the outdoor advertising industry.
The panel, which needed five votes to send a rewritten sign law to the City Council, deadlocked on a series of 4-3 votes.
Commissioner Mike Woo led the fight against the 151-page proposal, which would prohibit new digital billboards and most large-scale vinyl supergraphics on a citywide basis but allow them in up to 21 potential sign districts. Woo said the city needs more strict criteria before allowing such sign districts.
"What people are going to see is a massive proliferation of signs in the city" if the ordinance goes unchanged, he said.
The commission plans to take up the matter again next week. If approved, the sign law would give the council discretion to create billboard districts in neighborhoods such as Van Nuys, Encino, Koreatown, Warner Center, Westwood, Chinatown and San Pedro. For each district, the council would need to make special findings that such signs would enhance a neighborhood's "unique quality, theme or character."
Planning officials said a far greater number of districts could be created under the current law. Still, billboard foes warned that such exceptions would continue to make the city vulnerable to legal challenges -- and attract more digital billboards and vinyl supergraphics, which can cover one or more sides of a multistory building.
Advertising companies repeatedly have sued the city, saying that the council cannot ban signs on a citywide basis while approving them in certain locations, such as a Hollywood billboard district.
"Each sign district you approve, each exception you grant, will consign our city to the continuing proliferation of lawsuits and the relentless proliferation of larger and more intrusive signs," Westwood resident Marilyn Cohon told the commission.
Chief Assistant City Atty. David Michaelson disagreed, saying that the new sign ordinance is designed to satisfy U.S. District Judge Audrey Collins, who struck down the city's 2002 billboard law as unconstitutional last year.
"We believe the sign district language, presently drafted as it appears before you today, should survive judicial scrutiny," he told the panel.
Commissioner Sean Burton spoke in favor of the new rules, saying that any sign district would be subject to a lengthy review process.
