Based upon our unscientific polling, two bills to ease restrictions on roadside signs are not popular.
That’s based upon the wrinkled-nose look people get when they hear about the idea, as if they have just encountered an unpleasant odor.
That look is usually accompanied by a little tilt of the head, indicating puzzlement, as if wondering why we’re even talking about this issue. Or, perhaps, as if trying to picture how the state would look if we went back to having nearly 5,000 roadside signs.
That’s how many there were in the late 1960s, before the state banned billboards.
Tuesday a variety of people testified before the Legislature’s Transportation Committee against the two sign bills.
The roadside sign provision is a small part of LD 1367, which seeks to increase funding for the state’s rural roads. It calls for the state to rent billboard space and apply the revenue to road improvements.
“A few billboards wouldn’t hurt a thing,” sponsor Doug Thomas, R-Ripley, told the Portland Press Herald.
The other proposal, by Rep. Dennis Keschl, R-Belgrade, would allow much larger signs, as tall as 100 feet, so long as they are located on a company’s property.
While the sign-bill sponsors are both Republicans, it would be wrong to think the sign restrictions were initiated by Democrats.
Marion Fuller Brown, a Republican legislator from York, was the inspiration behind the original bill. She is now 93 and was unable to attend the hearing.
Instead, her two daughters conveyed her dismay to the Transportation Committee.
“The removal of the billboards is her proudest moment and her legacy to Maine’s quality of place,” daughter Emily Fuller Hawkins of Deer Isle, told legislators, according to the Press Herald.
“The current efforts to chip away at Maine’s environmental achievements enacted between the 1960s and today have caused her great distress,” Hawkins said. “I’m here to convey and carry on her passion.”
Mrs. Brown, and her daughters, are right.
In tough economic times it’s easy to forget that Maine’s “brand” is valuable and brings in hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue each year.
That brand is built upon clean highways, clean waterways and uncluttered vistas. It is a documented business asset.
Some also tend to forget how our highways looked before the ban went into place as businesses competed to have the largest, tallest and most gaudy billboards.
Thomas made an impassioned plea for his bill. “How many jobs do we lose and how do we affect our business climate because we don’t allow them to use one of the most effective ways to advertise,” the Bangor Daily News quoted him as saying.
But Thomas’ claim of lost revenue and jobs is entirely unsupported. In fact, the firms you might think would benefit from his bill actually oppose it.
Representatives of the Maine Restaurant Association, the Maine Tourism Association and the Maine Innkeepers Association all testified against the bill, according to the BDN.
They testified that an uncluttered landscape is a more valuable business asset than a bigger, taller highway sign.
Legislators should heed their advice and reject these bills.
rrhoades@sunjournal.com
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