Written by Pat Byington (editor@bamanews.com), member of the Alabama Environmental Management Commission and publisher of the Bama Environmental News (http://www.BamaNews.com).
This editorial first appeared in the Birmingham News on Sunday, January 20, 2002.
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"Many elected officials break law with signs"
Don't look now, but your elected officials and people seeking public office may be breaking the law.
According to Alabama Code Section 23-1-6, "Signs, markers and advertising on the rights-of-way of state controlled highways are prohibited except those official signs or markers place thereon by the State Department of Transportation or under its authority."
Two weeks before a major judicial election, I drove from Birmingham to Montgomery with the Rev. Mark Johnston, director of Camp McDowell, an Episcopal church camp. During our trip, we counted 2,489 political signs along I-65. We could barely keep up the count. These potential judges had their signs out in full force. Assuming these signs weigh between 1/2 to three pounds each, we were looking at nearly two tons of garbage. Our judges looked like major litter offenders, before they even made it to the bench.
If the method used to run a campaign has any relationship to the methods that will be used in office, I'd have to say that Alabama is in trouble. Most of our politicians start off by breaking the law. We know exactly who's doing all this littering -- their names are written in bold type. We don't know exactly how much taxpayers pay for road crews to clean up our public right of ways after a campaign, but we do know that finding a place for all this garbage is increasingly difficult.
I believe in the right to free speech, don't get me wrong. But a political sign placed with permission in my neighbor's yard speaks volumes more to me than some staggering display of foam core along Interstate 65. A sign in my neighbor's yard means that politician has earned my neighbor's respect. A sign on the highway earns that politician nothing but my disgust.
I've seen political signs hung from overpasses, tacked onto directional signs, taped up on construction barriers. All these signs constitute litter, illegal advertising and are a threat to public safety. Call a campaign office to complain, and you'll hear a politician hiding behind the excuse -- "my campaign workers are just overzealous." Let's have candidates take responsibility for their campaigns and their campaign workers. I think we all know that signs are put on public property with the candidate's full knowledge, and just a wink and a nod towards the law that makes it litter.
If politicians want to advertise on the state's right of ways,
let's have them apply for a permit and pay for the privilege.
Other states --Mississippi and Georgia come to mind -- don't have
these kinds of litter problems. Why should we tolerate it? It
sends the wrong message to our children, implying that litter
is okay if it's for a "higher purpose."
It breeds a culture of contempt for the law.
Alabama has thousands of unsightly, illegal dumps along our landscape and roadsides already. Recently, the Alabama Scrap Tire Study Commission reported that there are more than twenty million tires dumped illegally in our state. In Jefferson County more than 200 illegal dumps have been identified in the past couple of years. Maybe it's our legislators' cavalier attitude towards litter that makes it impossible to pass legislation effectively cleaning up these illegal dumps.
Let's tell our state's politicians that we won't have them littering the public land any more. Their political signs are the equivalent of graffiti, and we don't need it. If they have a message, let them earn the right to display it honestly on the private property of business owners and taxpayers. Then, we can take the money we save on cleaning up their litter and do something positive for our roadsides, like planting more wildflowers.
That would be a sight worth seeing.
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