Washington lawmakers consider allowing digital billboards

The ongoing fight over digital billboards is heating up again in our state, as the Washington State Legislature is considering allowing what critics call “televisions on sticks” along state highways.

Bills have been introduced in both the state House and Senate, with bipartisan support. The effort is led by media-giant Clear Channel, which owns or operates the vast majority of billboards around the state.

The new law would keep existing limits on billboards, restricting them to industrial and commercial areas. They would have to be static, with flashing or moving lights prohibited. Images would only be allowed to change every eight seconds.

The measure doesn’t explicitly authorize the signs. Rather, it would give municipalities the power to approve or decline them at their own discretion.

Critics call the signs a blight, arguing their brightness and the movement of the images are a dangerous distraction.

Clear Channel currently has nine digital billboards in Western Washington. The most recent went up last month in Tukwila on city land. But the company has been embroiled in a number of disputes over the digital signage elsewhere.

Tacoma voted to block them several years ago after Clear Channel sued the the city, calling a ban on billboards unconstitutional. The two sides are in the middle of a two-year “standstill” agreement to negotiate a settlement.

But opponent Paula Rees says Tacoma was forced to back down because it couldn’t afford the cost of defending against a $75 million lawsuit, and warns what happened there would happen to any other city trying to block Clear Channel if the new proposal passes.

“There’s not a town or city in this state that could say no and survive the consequences,” she says.

The King County Council rejected digital signage amidst public outcry last year. And while the city of Kent has partnered with Clear Channel to allow the signs, leaders in both Renton and Burien opposed them during annexation discussions with the county in 2011.

Clear Channel and supporters frequently tout the public benefits of the digital signage. The new laws would require the company provide access for AMBER Alerts and other emergency messages for free in exchange for approval. And the company has already made such agreements with the other areas where they are allowed.

“I’m for anything that helps the AMBER alert system,” Rep. Chris Reykdal, one of the current bill’s sponsors, told Crosscut. Reykdal also says he supports digital billboards because they’re “the future of advertising” and a boon to both Clear Channel and smaller advertisers alike who he says can afford to buy space for eight seconds when they couldn’t afford a full billboard.

But Rees and other opponents call the supposed public benefits a “red herring.” She argues AMBER alerts happen far too infrequently and are minimally effective considering the impact of the digital signage the rest of the time.

“I’ve been studying this in detail,” she says. “There are much more effective ways to convey an AMBER Alert. I have an app that notifies me instantly. Truckers have units in their trucks, schools have units in their school.”

Rees also points to a 2007 University of Nevada study that questioned the efficacy of AMBER Alerts, ultimately calling them “crime-control theater.”

Other supporters of the bill say it should be left up to local governments to decide.

“I’m not trying to promote them at all. I’m trying to make sure there’s some regulatory way for local jurisdictions to decide if they want to do this and how they want to do this,” said Rep. Luis Moscoso (D-Olympia), a co-sponsor of the House bill.

Both the House and Senate transportation committees will hold public hearings on the proposal Wednesday afternoon.

It could all be a moot point. The anti-blight group Scenic America filed a lawsuit in Washington, D.C. two weeks ago that would ban electronic signage, seeking to overturn that 2007 finding and pull the plug on highway e-boards. If Scenic America succeeds it might render any action by the legislature moot, at least on the most important highways.