Lobbyist Ties To Councillor Leroy Robinson Continue Unabated

Councillor Leroy Robinson, Chairman of the Metropolitan & Economic Development committee of the City-County Council, continues his cozy relationship with lobbyists who have business before his powerful committee.

His latest campaign finance report, covering contributions from January 1 and April 10 of this year, lists contributions from lobbyists D. William Moreau, Jr. and Greg Hahn.   Hahn is, and has been for some time, a registered lobbyist for Lamar Companies and Outfront Media, both billboard companies.  Moreau was registered to lobby for Clear Channel last year, but has not registered to lobby for them this year.

Hahn is also Robinson's Campaign Treasurer.

Hahn is not doing a particularly good job at that position as far as filing a complete report is concerned.  Hahn reports, as he should, donations for the reporting period as well as the total donation by an individual for the year-to-date.  Since these time periods are one and the same, both columns should be identical.  They are not.  Hahn lists himself as having given a $250 donation on March 15 and a year-to-date total of $500.  There is no entry of another time at which Hahn gave Robinson's campaign the other $250, as there is required to be. 

Additionally, Hahn lists Moreau's $250 donation on February 15, with a year-to-date total of $700.  Again, there is not another entry showing exactly when Moreau gave that money.

And, the summary cover page does not report the year-to-date figures.

Also, there is no mention of any donor's occupation, whereby the public might have a shot at putting two and two together.

You might be interested in the fact that on April 21, after the campaign finance reporting period ended, Robinson had a fundraiser, co-sponsored in part by not one, not two, not three, but four lobbyists with business before his committee --  Greg Hahn, Ahmed Young, Carl Drummer and Lacy Johnson.  Of course, the public will not be able to find out how much these 'interested citizens' helped Robinson's campaign raise that night, until after the Primary Election on May 5.

Robinson has tried to do some good things while in office, of that I have no doubt.  But, he is damaging, if not destroying, his reputation and the public confidence in him by continuing to have lobbyists front and center of his campaign.  The fact that they have business before his committee is cause for immense concern.

How Many Existing Billboards are Illegal?

I posted this on the Indiana Forefront blog today.

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If you listen to the representatives of Indy's three big billboard companies very closely, you will hear them talking about swapping and converting "legal non-conforming" billboards under the proposal written by themselves for themselves.  I refer to Prop 250, which the full Council sent back to committee on Monday night.

A legal non-conforming use is one that has been granted a certificate of legal non-conforming use (LNCU).  To obtain that certificate, documentation must be submitted showing the non-allowed use was in nearly continuous existence at a particular location since before 1969 or prior to the creation of the ordinance that created the non-conformity.

I have in my possession a list of billboard locations that Clear Channel offered, a couple of years ago, to swap out for digital billboards at new locations.  At the time, a Code Enforcement officer looked up locations to see if any permits had been obtained.  Of 42 locations with 52 sign faces, permits could not be found for 24 locations with 31 faces.

As of yesterday when I checked, none of these had certificates of LNCU noted in the City's online database.

Without a permit or an LNCU certificate, the billboard is illegal.

It would be an outrage to pass any change in the sign ordinance to allow swapping of illegal static faces for digital faces.

It would also be an outrage to pass any change in the sign ordinance that would allow the conversion of an illegal static face to a shiny new digital face.

Prop 250 does not disallow such exchanges.

The billboard companies should make public, before the January 26 Metropolitan & Economic Development committee meeting, a map of their current billboard locations as well as a table listing the address of each parcel and either the permit number or LNCU certificate number associated with the billboard at that location.

Any billboard that has neither a permit nor certificate is illegal and should be taken down at the expense of the billboard company with all due haste.

Proposed Digital Billboard Ordinance is an Insult to the Public Process

I just posted the following entry on the Indiana Forefront Blog - because my Had Enough Indy blog ist verboten in City Hall.

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The proposed digital billboard ordinance, coming before a Council committee Monday night, is an insult to the public process.

This lobbyist written law would overturn the compromise embodied in the current law, which bans digital billboards in Indianapolis.  The current law was created with a robust, public process that included all stakeholders and was led by a bipartisan Council effort.

The current law has been vigorously defended, both before the Boards of Zoning Appeals, the Metropolitan Development Commission, and in the Courts.

The proposed ordinance would declare that digital billboards erected in Indianapolis are not really illuminated by, among other things, intermittent lights.  Yah, right.  And the emperor is fully clothed.
This particular phrase is included as an end run around a long standing agreement between the Indiana Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration that, due to the intermittent lighting, bans digital billboards.

The lobbyists also included a provision that would allow the various ads to take up to 2 seconds to transition.  The literature clearly demonstrates that this is a particularly dangerous thing to do.  Two seconds inattention to the road ahead, is considered a hazardous driving condition.  The delayed changeover is specifically used in order to call attention to the ad, as drivers fix their attention, waiting for the next one to appear.

I could mention that a Michigan study demonstrated a statistically significant rise in accidents within 0.25 miles of digital billboards, even while the average accident rate on their highways fell between 2004 and 2012 – representing the years before and after  installation of electronic billboards.  The deviation is an 18% increase in accidents near such a billboard over the expected number.
I could also mention that a 2013 study of digital billboard induced driver distraction in Sweden, led that country to remove the signs and ban them.

Or, I could mention that an Israeli study that demonstrated a decrease in accidents of more than 30% when billboards were covered or removed along a busy Tel Aviv highway.  Injury and deaths from these accidents dropped 69%.

I could mention lots of studies.  But that is not the point I most want to make here.

The billboard lobbyists have been haunting the back rooms of City Hall for years now.  The total revision of our zoning laws has been going on for the last three.  The public could have been included in a review of the digital billboard ban in a comprehensive and valid way.

Instead, we are left out of the loop by some of our own elected officials.  Our previous efforts and our previous compromises are thrown aside as insignificant and meaningless history.

Its bad enough that lobbyists for any industry are allowed free rein to write our laws.  Its even worse when they are overturning a law that involved so many people, so many hours, and so much effort and money to create and defend.