L.A Billboard Policy 'Worst in Nation'

The aritcles features an interview with Scenic America President Kevin Fry:

"The city of Los Angeles has surrendered its built environment to advertising and sign companies. That’s a terrible tragedy for L.A. and the whole country, because what’s playing out in L.A. is happening on a smaller scale in other places."

"Los Angeles probably has the worst billboard problem in the country. No one knows exactly how many billboards there are in L.A. because the industry has prevented the city from counting them, which was the source of a series of lawsuits that were settled a couple of years ago. There is a minimum of 10,000 to 11,000 billboards in the city, of which probably a minimum of one-third are illegal."

"The billboard industry has been extremely cleaver in offering to public officials, for example, some kind of trade or revenue sharing for things like parks or public amenities in exchange for rights to put up a billboard on or near public property. By doing that you do a couple of things. One, you weaken your overall ability to control signs in other places where you purportedly don’t want them. Exceptions make it very difficult to enforce a law. The industry is very clever in that they have encouraged cities to carve out exceptions to the law. When the city then tries to enforce the law in other places, they are sued based on the inconsistent enforcement of the law. The city finds itself in a trap."