RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - A rewrite of North Carolina’s outdoor advertising regulations could bring more financial compensation to owners of roadside billboards when governments require they be dismantled to make way for new projects.
But government officials, including Gov. Roy Cooper’s transportation chief, and environmentalists warned that the proposal clearing a House panel Tuesday would cost taxpayers a whole lot more, delay highway projects and mean more trees get chopped down.
The bill also allows traditional signs to be replaced more easily with digital signs, offering changeable or rotating messages.
The state Department of Transportation and local governments already must provide “just compensation” when a billboard gets in the way of a road project and is taken down or relocated. That compensation is essentially limited to the fair market value of the outdoor advertising as personal property.
The proposal sets nine factors the DOT and local government must consider in calculating compensation, including predicted advertising income, future land leasing expenses and the value of having an outdoor advertising permit. The billboard owner additionally would be allowed to recover costs of relocating and rebuilding a pole that must be taken down.
Craig Justus, general counsel for the North Carolina Outdoor Advertising Association, told committee members that DOT’s current compensation for billboards along federal and state highways is negligible.
“What the DOT offers us is zero,” Justus said. “That is neither just nor is it compensation.”
The Department of Transportation urged committee members to oppose the measure, calling the compensation proposal “unprecedented.” Federal dollars couldn’t be used to compensate outdoor advertising owners for lost business income - unlike the current scheme, in which the state pays only 20 percent, according to DOT.
Conservation groups point to a Minnesota case where they say that state had to pay $4 million to remove a digital billboard.
“It will substantially increase our costs,” Transportation Secretary Jim Trogdon told the committee, saying it would set a “precedent that will be hard to deal with in the future.”
But Justus said large payouts aren’t in the best interests of billboard companies, which would prefer to retain the ad space that slowly dwindles as more roads knock out existing signs.
“We’re interested in preserving the asset,” he said. “We’re not going to fight for just compensation if we can relocate our asset.”
Trogdon also criticized provisions that DOT says would prohibit tree cuttings in highway medians. Instead, they could be removed to increase a sign’s visibility. And cities and counties couldn’t stop signs from being relocated or rebuilt along certain highways in commercial areas despite having ordinances restricting them.
“The legislation also could have the effect of undermining local visions for local economies, restricting local decision-making about where relocated billboards can go,” North Carolina League of Municipalities spokesman Scott Mooneyham wrote in an email.
The state Sierra Club chapter said the measure, which the committee approved despite some votes of opposition, probably wouldn’t increase the number of billboards statewide but would weaken the ability of government officials to control them. The bill’s next step is the House floor, possibly next week.
Bill sponsors acknowledged the measure lacked consensus but argued it would help level the playing field for the industry. The measure, co-sponsor Rep. Jason Saine of Lincoln County said, is designed to “try to right some wrongs.”
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