Sedano should start a kickstarter to raise funds and pay for the Data. I'm sure many enemies of the city council and of the bill boards would love to find out that data, especially in an election year.
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USC Grad Student Sues Over a Deep L.A. Secret: Who Got Rich Off Illegal Billboards?
PHOTO BY DREW BARILLAS
Lisa Sedano: "None of the elected people, including Carmen Trutanich, seem to want to cross the big billboard companies."
Correction
Our Aug. 3 news story incorrectly described the city attorney's position as to the city's billboard database ("Scholar Sues Over an Old L.A. Secret"). The city contends that it has repeatedly offered Lisa Sedano the complete database, as it exists in its current, draft form, with no caveats — provided she pay $591.44 to cover the costs of producing the records. They have also offered to provide owner identities and permit numbers in every case where such information exists. The L.A. Weekly regrets the error.
PHOTO BY DREW BARILLAS
Lisa Sedano: "None of the elected people, including Carmen Trutanich, seem to want to cross the big billboard companies."
All USC grad student Lisa Sedano wanted was to finish her geography dissertation. She was probing to the bottom of L.A. government's most Byzantine mapping mysteries, whose secrets have been piling up for nearly 100 years. She could not take no for an answer when City Attorney Carmen Trutanich's office threw up a final roadblock.
The city refused to let Sedano see a public database, long awaited by city leaders, community groups and others, which is expected to reveal the addresses, ID locators and permits for 6,000 to 7,000 legal and illegal billboards, which create a forest of outdoor advertising on L.A. streets.
It's public information. But those who hate L.A.'s outdoor advertising "clutter," and those who love its outdoor advertising "charms," have for years bitterly warred over and sued over the long-repressed contents of the billboard inventory.
The 2002 City Council banned new billboards, ordered the creation of the database — and ordered that it be made public. Trutanich is withholding key pieces of information, claiming the data aren't ready.
In 2007, L.A. Weekly used the California Public Records Act to request the data, long dubbed "The List," from the Department of Building and Safety, but department employees, acting on behalf of the big billboard firms, improperly alerted Clear Channel Outdoors and CBS Outdoors — who sued the city to prevent The List's release. The Weekly, joined by City Attorney Steve Blau, challenged the billboard firms and convinced a judge that the data was public.
With its victory in hand, the Weekly discovered that The List was a fantasy. Old permits were heaped in boxes. Vague billboard addresses were unsearchable and often not matched to owners. Building and Safety officials admitted it took a professional two hours to trace a single billboard permit — the same time as in 2002, when the angry City Council ordered the creation of a searchable database so the city could eradicate illegal billboards.
The new data are expected to be embarrassing to city officials and some of their donors in the United States' $6.5 billion outdoor advertising industry.
"They're hanging onto information that reveals just how in bed with the city government the billboards are," says Sedano, a Berkeley Law grad who isn't nervous about staring down Trutanich.
Sedano is suing the city and Building and Safety. The inventory could reveal which corporations and wealthy individuals created in Los Angeles what critics call the capital of the illegal billboard industry.
In a City Hall where all but one or two politicians take money from the billboard firms, there's more than just the potential for embarrassment if Sedano gets her way.
As a geographer, Sedano says, "Maybe if people [in L.A.] did talk about it, they could say, well, what is the city landscape worth? What is the price tag for our skyline?"
City officials had estimated 4,000 illegal billboards in L.A. — some furtively erected atop buildings, lacking earthquake approvals or other permits, others illegally doubled or tripled from their original size. But a few months ago, Building and Safety principal inspector Luke Zamperini told Sedano about 1,000 billboards may be illegal. Inspectors spent three years comparing old permits to the size of actual billboards and driving city streets spotting ghost billboards whose owners have defied the law.
Of multi-ton billboards erected in the dead of night, anti-billboard activist Dennis Hathaway says, "There's no way of knowing if those things are safe."
Sedano also believes outdoor advertising clutter constitutes a private use of a public resource: the skyline.
"They are the one commercial message that you cannot turn off," she says. "You can decide to get off Facebook, or not to buy a magazine. You can't not go out in your neighborhood, you can't not drive to work because you don't want to have messages bombarding you."
Sedano grew up in Manhattan Beach, attended Harvard, wrote for the Harvard Lampoon, tried corporate law and worked at Nolo Press, which publishes self-help law books. She's perfect for taking on City Hall.
She got into billboards after reading an L.A. Weekly cover story by Christine Pelisek, "Billboards Gone Wild." Sedano found it bizarre that after the City Council banned billboards in 2002, the outdoor advertising industry just built more anyway.
Sedano made her dissertation a political excavation into the attempt to locate and control thousands of billboards across 468 square miles of terrain.
In 2002, the 15 council members created the ridiculously named OSSPIP — the "off-site sign periodic inspection program" — and promised that inspectors would review all billboards every three years, making sure they were legal and safe.
But CBS and Clear Channel sued. They claimed that a $368-per-billboard fee — charged every three years for inspections — was too steep. Yet a single, two-sided, 48-foot-long billboard typically earns $504,000 over three years.
12 comments
It's getting more and more like 1920s Chicago in this city! The amount of graft and cronyism is unbelievable. I'm thankful to people like Sedano who are trying to do something about it. I wish she would also start looking into the 'relationships' (i.e. money changing hands) between the Office of The Mayor, the City Council, the Office of Permits and the big developers like CIM.
One problem seems to be that, in 20s Chicago for instance, there were a couple of radio stations and two or three newspapers reporting on the crooked goings on. But today with innumerable media outlets grabbing for our attention, it's hard for a story to get any traction unless it starts getting covered across the board. Unfortunately government corruption isn't as sexy of a story line as the latest Kardashian folly so I guess this story will only get so much media interest before it fades away and allows these crooks to go on with business as usual.
The LA city government is a total mess.
Thousands of illegal billboards, illegal weed shops sprout up every day.Cutting bus service to build light rail then building the rail in areas its not needed or building a rail to the airport that doesn't make it to the airport (twice!).
When right wingers talk about government inefficiency they can use LA as a poster child.
The illegal billboards are a symptom but I want to know how the city government became/is so incompetent and how to reform it.
3 cheers for Sedano, with the brains and guts to take them on. Fantastic.
The billboards degrade the visual assets of the City. For those who do want to sell those out, they should at least be sold transparently, for fair value and with legit regulation.
(Sure, the so-called "LA Weekly" (RIP original LA Weekly) continues with its fake-muckraking-outrage hit'n'run news stories, but I'm glad when they at least bring awareness to an issue worth having attention.)
As long as the billboard owners are paying taxes I'm ok with billboards. If they aren't paying permitting fees or taxes then they should be taken down.
Here's a question: do we consider small 'flap board' style signs (the type that small shop owners place on sidewalks) an 'illegal' billboard? If so, then I think we need to revisit the permitting process.
As an aside, I feel this whole mega billboard, electric sign thing is a made-up problem. We have such bigger issues to address (access to mass transit, homelessness in Downtown) that it makes me feel this is a distraction.
Will the Weekly do a real news article for once? Like analysis the Public Employee Pension system? Or Los Angeles' stuctured budget deficit?
@ncrpz2 I really don't think this applies to mom and pop shops throwing up a sandwich board on the sidewalk. We're talking possibly millions of dollars in unpaid fees, taxes and fines that are owed to us that would be additional funds to help balance the budget. I think this is quite the valid story which could also lead to some uncovering of rampant corruption and hopefully some convictions if merited.
@Justice If it's all about fees, taxes and fines then I'm all for it. As long as the sign owner pay, I don't care where the signs go.
As far as 'rampant corruption' I think the assessor's scandal more than covers that. If anything, I think it's just the city not caring enough to properly collected the fees rather than the sign holders lining the pockets of city officals so that they can put up giant 'Enjoy Coke' ads.
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Time for the FBI. Bell, Cudahy and now the big fish LA the corruption is self-evident, the proof and the convictions will be harder to find.
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Hats off to Lisa Sedano.
The outdoor advertising companies continue to expand the amount of outdoor ad space.
Recently they are using new technology to make larger and brighter billboards, with this alone the amount of ad space has increased 10-20% citywide. More digital billboards are being snuck in and they have replaced existing billboards with "significantly" brighter billboards which are far more
distracting for drivers and raise driving safety concerns to a new level.
Even more disturbing is the growing explosion of "lawn furniture" outdoor ads constructed on city sidewalks. How did this happen without public approval?
Every single day the amount of outdoor ad space increases in Los Angeles, what little quality this city has is being enveloped by glaring ads. The public voted to stop this, yet the outdoor companies control the city with threats of legal action while the city attorney and city council cower and do nothing.
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This story is great, do you guys remember the one a couple of years ago where Rocky Delgadillos wife got in to a car accident with a city of L.A suv and told the other party not to report anything that her husband would fix everything, only because she was driving with a suspended license, never heard how that one eneded I guess he did fix everything. Dam corrupt bastards!
It is no surprise that Trutanich doesn't want the public to know that in spite of all his loudmouthing bragging and bullying, he does not actually have any concrete data as to how many illegal billboards there are in LA, or where they are. Funny thing though, when Trutanich was nailed for having a bunch of his own illegal billboards on Ventura Blvd. in Studio City for over two years, Zamperini at LADBS said that they were 'temporary' signs that did not require a permit. It is a sick joke the way the people of LA have been conned by Trutanich. Let's be sure to kick him out LA in March 2013. In the meantime, keep on watching him like a hawk.
I'm amazed to hear that Trutanich's organization, and the administration of the Department of Building and Safety have seemingly trying to cover up what at the least, seems like willful negligence on carrying out the laws of this city. These organizations should be audited and the administration be held responsible if it was shown that this in fact is all true. As a government of the people, the people deserve to demand transparency and accountability.
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