Audio By Carbonatix
What if a bagman from a billboard company met with certain City of Miami officials and offered them $350,000 to make a big problem go away? That would be bad, right? Well, two weeks ago city manager Joe Arriola and city attorney Alex Vilarello asked Miami’s five commissioners to do just that: accept that sum from Carter Outdoor Advertising, proud owner of at least ten illegal billboards in Miami. In exchange the city would agree not to enforce the law that makes those signs illegal.
Carter’s big problem was this: The city’s billboard law allows a “maximum of ten” so-called expressway signs along I-95, I-395, and I-195. The ten-board maximum was reached years before Carter rolled into town in 1997. But today instead of ten signs, there are at least thirty-one along the expressways that pass through Miami city limits. Ten of those belong to Carter, each of which is illegal. If the city enforced the law, Carter’s signs, and the hundreds of thousands of dollars they generate each year, would have to go.
The Carter problem came to light more than three years ago, when New Times notified city officials that a number of unauthorized billboards had sprouted up along I-95. Inspectors soon counted at least 21 illegal expressway signs. After prolonged machinations among city commissioners, a comprehensive survey was conducted, supervised by a top-level bureaucrat. The results: A whopping 375 billboards littered the city, and fully 90 percent of them were illegal.
So brazen was the billboard industry’s willingness to break the law that even billboard lobbyists began to defect. In 1985 Dusty Melton, a former Miami Herald political reporter turned lobbyist, helped persuade the Dade County Commission to incorporate Miami’s ten-billboard law into a broader county ordinance that banned all billboards along all expressways. In other words, the industry got a break in the City of Miami thanks to Melton’s efforts.
But those efforts were made to look somewhat foolish by the industry’s utter disregard for the city and county ordinances. That did not sit well with Melton, and neither did the response from Miami city officials, which was virtually no response at all. So he began a behind-the-scenes campaign aimed at spurring city and county officials to uphold the 1985 law.
In May of last year Melton reached the point of meltdown. “A lot of us are starting to ask: When are the grotesquely illegal signs going to be dealt with in a meaningful way, and the people who perpetrated this on our community going to suffer the consequences?” he asked at a city commission meeting. “If you all are serious about cleaning up urban blight in this city, if you’re serious about sending a message about white-collar crime — which is what this is — and if you’re serious about not being steamrolled or blindsided by a multihundred-million-dollar-a-year industry, then maybe this is the night to send them a message.”
This time the city responded by initiating a series of special hearings to process a huge backlog of zoning violations related to the illegal signs. Eventually Carter was ordered to remove one of its expressway signs and to pay thousands of dollars in fines. The company appealed the penalties in state court. That’s when the city opted for an out-of-court settlement.
To put the Carter deal in perspective, the $350,000 payoff is roughly the same amount the company has made on just one of its illegal expressway billboards since it began erecting them in 1997. Carter charges about $10,000 per month for an expressway ad, meaning that its ten expressway billboards have brought in approximately six million dollars so far. Surely commissioners would think that forfeiting a city law was worth more than a few hundred grand, right? Wrong. At a July 17 meeting the settlement was accepted on a 4-0 vote with little discussion.
The Carter agreement is remarkable for reasons other than the cash payment. It does not require the company to take down any of its illegal billboards. Rather it gives Carter two options: 1) dismantle two of the illegal signs by the year 2023, or 2) pay the city $40,000 and relocate the two signs. The company would have until the end of 2008 to move on the second alternative.
Besides some cash, what else does the city get out of the deal? Publicity. For the next twenty years the City of Miami is entitled to free advertising on Carter’s illegal billboards “as space is available,” according to the settlement. (Other companies already offer free ads as a public service.)
So why would Arriola, the surly millionaire hired for his tough management style, accept a wimpy deal with a company that flouted city law? “It’s not wimpy,” he counters. “We’re not in the litigation business, okay? We were spending lots and lots in attorneys’ fees. A couple of hundred thousand dollars so far.” Carter, he believes, would have dragged the city through court cases for the next ten years, costing taxpayers “millions” of dollars. “They raped us and now we’re getting a half-assed settlement. But you know, at times you’ve got to cut your losses, and that’s what I’m doing.”
He’s also created a new problem: The settlement violates the Miami-Dade County billboard law, which still allows only ten expressway signs in Miami and none elsewhere. “Anything in excess of that would be a violation,” confirms assistant county attorney John McInnis. “The county ordinance really supersedes any conflicting municipal ordinances. A municipality may establish and enforce more restrictive regulations, but the [county] ordinance does not give municipalities the ability to adopt regulations that are less restrictive.”
Nobody knows this better than Dusty Melton, but he wasn’t able to attend the July 17 meeting because he was tending to his mother’s funeral. Melton says he contacted each commissioner’s office and asked for a one-week delay of the Carter issue so he could participate in the public hearing. “The fact that these guys would feel like they had to pass it two weeks ago when there was no articulate opposition around to shame them says a lot about the whole mess,” Melton complains. “This is one of the most shameful chapters in the entire history of the City of Miami.”
One lobbyist familiar with the Carter settlement agrees with Melton’s assessment: The deal was a clear win for the billboard company. “It was the ultimate slam dunk for Carter. The city rolled over.”
Miami commissioners will have several more chances to roll over for other illegal billboard owners. Next month the city begins bargaining with Clear Channel, which owns the vast majority of Miami’s illegal billboards. It will also have to deal with Viacom. At their July 17 meeting Miami’s commissioners approved up to $100,000 to cover legal fees for a private law firm to handle the negotiations. Meanwhile, Carter, Clear Channel, and Viacom continue to reel in the millions.
