Reason to cheer the departure of Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo: Carmen Trutanich, his replacement, won another courtroom victory against the 11,000 billboards slathered all over sad-sack L.A — up to 4,000 of them illegally installed without an earthquake check, their safety utterly unknown.

But Trutanich's victory over Vanguard Outdoor was overshadowed by the Los Angeles City Council patting its own back Tuesday for its modest vote to ban future supergraphics in Hollywood. It's modest because this “ban” lets lots of garish supergraphics remain, and some residents hate them.

Vanguard was trying to get Judge Collins to extend a temporary injunction that has allowed Vanguard to keep illegal supergraphics at three sites, claiming free speech. Please. But for now, Vanguard won't have to remove the ads because the firm is appealing her decision.

For further reading on how L.A. got turned into the capital of the illegal billboard industry in the U.S., please go to our extensive LA Weekly coverage:

— Read our seminal cover story, “Billboards Gone Wild,” about how the Los Angeles City Council and mayor allowed huge billboard corporations to swamp the city with outdoor ads.

— Read about the wealthy Westsiders, out-of-staters and pals of L.A. politicians who get rich off billboards, signs and other ad blight that they slather on surfaces in L.A. neighborhoods, in our story, “Mad Men of Los Angeles.”

— Read how Clear Channel tried to stop LA Weekly from obtaining a long-repressed list of citywide billboards, their locations and owners, and how Los Angeles city workers conspired to help Clear Channel keep the info secret, in the blog post “Clear Channel Messed With LA Weekly And Lost!”

And please visit Los Angeles billboard expert Dennis Hathaway's excellent website, BanBillboardBlight

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