LETTERS: PROTECTING STATE'S SCENERY

To the editor:

In the waning hours of this year's legislative session, the Missouri Senate attached billboard-control language to an obscure bill (House Bill 831) related to city planning and zoning functions. The amendment would permit "any city that maintains the city engineer or other similar city official on the planning commission ... to place any restriction upon the height, spacing and lighting of outdoor advertising structures."

In both chambers, the voters were nearly unanimous. Observers in the House and Senate galleries could hear a collective sigh of relief on the floors below. It was as if the General Assembly had finally gotten rid of a raw, itchy rash. Finally, a "compromise" had been reached on the volatile billboard issue.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch commented two days later that the billboard vote was a "rose" in the label of the Legislature. It had "curbed visual pollution" by giving "local communities" more control over billboards. The billboard lobbyists, skulking quietly in the Capitol hallways, laid low.

Here are the facts: HB 831 will do nothing to reduce the massive visual pollution in Missouri caused by billboards. The language applies only to cities, not counties, and only to cities with planning and zoning in place. The Missouri Municipal League estimates that less than 25 percent of Missouri's cities have planning and zoning. Many Missouri cities don't want planning and zoning forced on them. But they do want to prohibit or strictly regulate visual pollution. HB 831 will not help most Missouri cities do this.

On a more depressing note, most major highways running through our cities are already saturated with huge billboards. Although a few of our cities will be able to slightly slow billboard growth on some roads, HB 831 will not help them reduce billboard blight. Billboard growth is highest in unincorporated, rural and scenic areas, where planning and zoning may never exist. The proliferation of sham businesses to justify billboard permits in "unzoned commercial areas," allowed under Missouri's weak state billboard law and recently reported by the Post-Dispatch, will continue unabated.

HB 831 will not change the fact that Missouri has nearly three times as many billboards as our eight neighboring states. It will not change the fact that Missouri is the only state not allowing local governments to prohibit billboard pollution. It will not change the fact that in Kansas City and St. Louis over 50 percent of all billboards advertise alcohol and tobacco products or that this figure reaches 65 percent in minority neighborhoods. It will not change the fact that on the 120-mile drive on I-70 between St. Louis and Columbia or the 130-mile drive on I-55 between St. Louis and Cape Girardeau or on the 180-mile drive on I-44 between St. Louis and Joplin or the 50-mile drive on I-70 between Grain Valley and Kansas City motorists are inundated with giant, tacky, distracting signs.

Visual pollutions caused by billboards in Missouri has reached the point of the absurd. It has become laughable and tragic. As a citizen said to me recently, "God gave Missouri a special gift -- its scenic beauty -- and we've ruined it."

Local decision making about billboards -- total, unqualified decision-making authority -- is the best way to protect Missouri's scenic beauty. The Legislature has washed its hands of this issue. Now it's up to us, the citizens. We'll get our chance to vote for meaningful billboard reform in November 1998 when the Save Our Scenery Amendment will be on the ballot. See you at the polls.

KARL KRUSE, Executive Director

Scenic Missouri

Columbia