Your city at work

Just when you think the L.A. bureaucracy couldn't become more inept and slothful, along comes another outrage. We're talking billboards, which have become such a local embarrassment of late that the NYT has gotten interested. You might know the backstory: In 2002, the Council passed an ordinance prohibiting new billboards and ordering an inventory of existing ones. But the billboard companies challenged the ordinance in court, leading to settlements in 2006 and 2007 that obviously didn't get enough scrutiny. (Never mind that our crack city attorney, Rocky Delgadillo, the guy who orchestrated the settlements, happened to receive a bunch of campaign contributions from said billboard companies.) As part of the deal, CBS and Clear Channel were allowed to convert as many as 850 print billboards to electronic ones. And we all know what a scourge the electronic billboards have become. Thanks Rock-o.

“It was probably a mistake to approve that legal settlement as it was,” said Eric Garcetti, the Council’s president. So in the next few weeks, Mr. Garcetti said, the Council will vote on an emergency moratorium that would halt billboard conversions and new billboard construction for six months. The lawmakers, now convinced that the settlements were a bad idea and that they will find support for more stringent review in existing state environmental law, would use that time to strengthen their 2002 ordinance.

[CUT]

Two weeks ago, meanwhile, the Council summoned Hector Buitrago, chief of code enforcement for the city’s Building and Safety Department, so he could report on the billboard inventory that the old ordinance had ordered. When Mr. Buitrago said calmly that a complete inventory did not exist, the members peppered him with questions, some demanding a full one within weeks. He listened, hands in his lap, then said such a list would take months. Later, in an e-mail message to a reporter, Mr. Buitrago said his department had no resources for such a “time-consuming endeavor.” “We have no authorized positions, and no valid ordinance to allow” the inventory, since the 2002 statute provided no adequate financing for it, he said.

Let’s get this straight: It’s been six years since the original ordinance, and in all time the Building and Safety Department could not prepare an inventory of billboards? The mind boggles.