rss
mobile
Feeds
It was a local decision, and it should stay that way. A proposed pilot program to allow the state Department of Transportation to replace old billboards with new ones in a two-for-one swap should not come to Beaufort County.
We don't need to swap old billboards for new ones even if the total numbers are reduced. We especially don't need the program if it allows electronic billboards.
Our law says there should be no billboards. The billboards that still remain were grandfathered under the 1984 ordinance. They should go; they should not be replaced by glowing signs that do even more to distract and detract from the area's natural beauty.
Companion bills in the House and Senate would authorize the state Department of Transportation to start a highway beautification pilot project that would reduce the number of billboards not meeting standards set under the federal Highway Beautification Act. Signs that are not properly permitted, obsolete, dirty, in disrepair or not securely tied down are considered "nonconforming."
That seems like a good idea, but there's a catch. The bills also would allow billboard owners to put up a new billboard for taking down two billboards that don't meet standards. That means electronic billboards could go up.
Sponsors say the pilot project would apply only to billboards along Interstates 95 and 26. All well and good, but what then? A pilot project could turn into a permanent program and expand its reach.
Sen. Tom Davis of Beaufort says the bill should be changed to make sure it doesn't override county and local regulations.
Billboard owners have asked county officials to allow them to replace old signs with digital billboards, but county officials have said no. Now they're in Columbia asking for the same thing under the auspices of "beautifying" America's roadsides.
That's the same pattern we saw in 2006 when the legislature passed a law making it very expensive to ban billboards. Local governments passed laws banning billboards, and lawmakers' answer was to make it costly to do so after heavy lobbying by the billboard industry.
Electronic billboards, with their constantly changing messages, also raise safety concerns. The industry maintains they are not more distracting to drivers than traditional billboards. In 2007, it released two studies it had commissioned. The studies concluded, not surprisingly given their funding source, that electronic billboards were safe and did not cause accidents. But critics say the methods and statistical analysis used in the studies were flawed.
Here in Beaufort County, we don't have to have that argument. Billboards are illegal. New ones shouldn't go up; old ones should come down.
Lawmakers in Columbia should have nothing to say about it.
