If safety concerns, legal issues, public outcry, visual blight and Lady Bird's legacy haven't swayed them, here's one more reason for the Texas Transportation Commission to scrap a proposal allowing digital billboards along highways — the cost to taxpayers.
The commission's original proposed rule stated there would be no increased costs for state or local governments over the first five years that digital billboards would be allowed in municipalities and surrounding areas. And that may be true for those five years.
But taxpayers could eventually end up picking up a much bigger tab than they do now when state or local governments have to remove the multimillion-dollar digital billboards for construction projects.
When the state widens a highway, for example, it is required to either relocate a billboard in the way or reimburse the owner for the cost of it. But the cost of digital billboards — which are powered by light-emitting diode (LED) technology, and can change images every four to 10 seconds — can be worth three to four times the value of a static billboard.
3.5 times the cost
In a December letter to transportation commissioners opposing the LED billboards, Harris County officials cited one Georgia case in which Lamar Outdoor Advertising claimed an electronic billboard was worth 3.5 times the cost of a regular billboard, or $2.9 million.
They can go for much more. I found one in Los Angeles for sale on outdoorbillboard.com for $4.4 million.
But using Lamar's figure, Harris County argued they would have had to pay $7.9 million in compensation, instead of $2.8 million, if the six billboards the county removed recently had been digital.
Transportation commission spokesman Chris Lippincott took issue with opposing digital billboards based on that logic.
"It would be the same thing as telling the owner of a Motel 6 that he or she shouldn't improve their property or turn it into a Four Seasons because of the prospect that we may have to come in at some point and expand the road," he said.
Municipalities aren't the only ones worried about the expense of the rules. The late transportation commission chairman Ric Williamson acknowledged the issue in a September letter to Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas.
"I agree with you that allowing LED billboards could increase our costs," Williamson wrote.
But Williamson had suggested a remedy: Lawmakers should just pass a law to push off the costs on cities.
Last session, Carona failed to pass a measure that would have done just that. In cases where the state's highway construction required the removal of a billboard, cities would have been forced to either relocate the billboard — even if doing so conflicted with local controls on visual blight — or suffer the hefty burden of compensating the billboard owner.
The measure was widely seen to have been tailored for the city of Houston, which started several years ago refusing to relocate billboards. Carona's spokesman Steven Polunsky said that if a city makes that choice, it should get stuck with the bill.
The Texas Municipal League saw it differently.
"It doesn't make sense for the city to pay for something that's being caused to be moved by a state highway project," said Scott Houston, TML's director of legal services.
Carona's spokesman said the senator does share concern for the increased costs of removing digital boards, and his committee is discussing the issue, along with other billboard reforms during the interim.
Concerns about distraction
Houston said he expects to fight the measure again next session.
And with the state transportation department having to put the brakes on road projects because of funding woes and a billion-dollar planning error, it could be one more way for the department to save money.
Transportation commissioners are slated to discuss the proposed digital billboard rules at their meeting later this month.
The panel has taken extra time to consider mounds of public comment from more than 750 Texans. Most members of the general public didn't like the idea of alternating, computer-controlled, crystal clear images further illuminating our already cluttered highway vistas.
As the Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau's Peggy Fikac reported, Texans were also concerned about motorist distraction and whether big campaign donations from billboard executives to elected officials could influence the decision by the governor-appointed commission.
Transportation officials have sold the idea as a local control issue: giving cities the right to make their own decisions on whether to allow digital billboards.
But history has shown that cities, especially small ones with limited legal staff or resources to fight lawsuits, can be steamrolled by the powerful $5 billion billboard industry.
The rules won't give local governments more power so much as render them vulnerable to attacks on their local sign codes.
If the rules are approved, the cost of de-cluttering our skies just got steeper. And it will be taxpayers who foot the bill.