Council Committee Keeps Digital Billboard Proposal Alive Despite Overwhelming Public Opposition

If you needed any further confirmation that members of the Indianapolis City-County Council auction off their votes on the council to the highest bidder, you need look no further than the action of the Metropolitan and Economic Development Committee at tonight's meeting. No other issue before the council in recent years has drawn more public opposition than Proposal No. 250, a draft zoning ordinance governing digital billboards, which was drafted by the billboard industry to allow current billboard owners to swap out their static billboards for digital billboards.

The unprecedented action stands current zoning laws on their head by allowing the council to draft a proposed zoning ordinance it expects to be acted upon by the Metropolitan Development Commission, which is charged under Indiana law with drafting zoning laws through a drawn out public process and then sending it on to the council for approval. Lobbyists for the billboard industry had been meeting secretly with council members over the past three years before rolling out the proposal to the public last year. Their proposal would undo the City's zoning law, which currently bans digital boards, and allow billboard companies to erect more than 70 of the high-tech signs over the next three years alone.

Despite the overwhelming public opposition at tonight's meeting to the proposal and the inability of lobbyists for the industry to answer basic questions about the impact of the zoning law they are proposing, committee members voted to postpone action on Proposal No. 250 until April at the request of the billboard lobbyists by a 6-1 vote, the second such delay since an initial hearing last November. Only Councilor Jeff Miller (R) opposed the postponement, who has said he intends to vote against it. The proposal's sponsor, Mary Moriarty Adams (D), the committee chairman, Leroy Robinson (D), and Councilors Zach Adamson (D), John Barth (D), Vop Osili (D) and Will Gooden all voted against the overwhelming public opposition by keeping the proposal alive. The members expect the opponents to negotiate a zoning ordinance with the billboard industry rather than allowing the normal zoning process to play out.

Staff members for the Department of Metropolitan Development are still trying to wrap up work on Rezone Indy, a major undertaking to update the City's zoning laws. Although the original Rezone Indy project included signs within its scope, the Department pulled that component out and stated it planned to take up discussion of billboard zoning regulations only after it completed the larger Rezone Indy project. Proponents of Proposal No. 250 want to force the DMD staff to use the billboard-drafted ordinance as a starting point for their discussions. It is no secret that lobbyists for the billboard companies have been lavishing campaign contributions on council members over the past year, Clearly, these council members were more concerned about what their campaign contributors would think of them if they killed Proposal No. 250 than what the dozens of neighborhood residents throughout the City representing every council district think about them. I think it's time for neighborhood leaders to wake up and start bucking the system by drafting their own candidates to run for the council in the respective primaries and vote out of office council members produced through the respective parties' corrupt slating processes.