Billboard settlement lesson: Work fast to avoid criticism

Give points to the Tacoma City Council and its appointed city manager.

At least when they do damage to open government and public participation, they do so in new and creative ways.

Like when they reached consensus on finalists for two open council seats in closed session, they came out and made sure they didn’t approve the eight names in alphabetical order. They mixed the names up a bit to give the appearance that a predetermined list was random.

A judge told the council members to do it better when they made the actual appointments, and they did.

Now the council has used the settlement of a lawsuit as the excuse for making a major public policy decision – how many, and what kind, of billboards to allow around the city – with zero public participation.

They did so without even placing the issue on the agenda until shortly before the meeting. And they approved the legal settlement following closed-door discussion with hardly a single word of public debate.

The result is that Tacoma will get up to 36 digital billboards throughout the city in exchange for the removal of a few hundred traditional billboards.

Is this a good deal? Maybe. But it is far worse for billboard opponents than the current ordinance, which simply bans most existing billboards. And it requires the city to roll over for Clear Channel, which had filed a suit against the city’s ban that the city might well have won in court.

I’m not a fan of billboards. But I realize I have no credibility to criticize what is an advertising competitor to my employer.

But many Tacoma residents do have credibility to oppose them. And they thought they’d won when the council imposed the ban in 1997. Sure, they had to wait a decade for the billboard owners to amortize their investment. But it was going to be worth it.

These same people might want to have their voices heard regarding the city’s new strategy. Unfortunately, the way the council conducted this business assures they won’t have a meaningful voice.

First, they had no way to know that the issue would be before the council last Tuesday evening. Only guerrilla cartoonist R.R. Anderson was there to object.

Don’t worry, the city’s legal staff says. The actual ordinance to allow digital boards in trade for some old billboards must follow the city’s regular process. Public notice will be given, and public testimony will be taken.

Regardless of these legal niceties, the decision has been made.

Unless the council approves an ordinance in sync with the legal settlement, that settlement is voided and the city is back in court. By approving the deal, the council has already established the policy that it wants to settle the litigation. That makes the new billboard ordinance a done deal – perhaps not legally, but practically.

Why did the council have to vote on the legal settlement so quickly? That’s a time-honored technique by city managers and city attorneys to get rapid approval of deals they strike. They warn the council that judges or other parties to the lawsuit need an answer immediately. Delay will endanger the deal, they say.

And councils go along because they are intimidated by lawyers and would prefer not to have a process that allows residents to beat up on them for their decision.

But this isn’t some slip-and-fall lawsuit. This is a case that has been important to residents. And this is a settlement that creates public policy.

The council members may have followed the letter of open meetings laws (although that remains subject to argument). They aren’t required to post an agenda, and they may have included the necessary fudge words in the legal settlement so it doesn’t appear to predetermine the shape of the new ordinance.

But the members continue to be lost when it comes to the spirit of open government: that residents and taxpayers get to watch their government and get to take part in the decision.

Peter Callaghan: 253-597-8657 peter.callaghan@thenewstribune.com blog.thenewstribune.com/politics