A Sign of Improvement
The state of Vermont has an anti-billboard law. We’re one of four states in the country to have such a law. It’s been around for 40 years, and as you might imagine, it passed under some controversy. Businesses wanted to advertise. Farmers wanted to lease their land to those advertisers. But a Republican — a Republican! — decided he didn’t like the way the land looked with billboards all over it, so he worked hard and in 1968, got the legislature to ban billboards from the state of Vermont.
You don’t realize they’re gone, until you drive over the border into New York and see them everywhere, and then you think yourself, “Oh yeah. That’s one of the reasons our roads are so beautiful.”
Anyway, there’s been a bit of stink up here because the state Legislature just wrote an exemption to the law. They did so that this sign could be deemed legal.
This is from the New York Times’s article, Mural Tests Vermont Law That Forbids Billboards: “John Zicconi, a spokesman for the Vermont Agency of Transportation said, ‘Time will tell, but clearly here in Vermont we can now have what people classify as billboards. We think it’s bad policy. Vermonters are very proud of the antibillboard law. This is the first significant alteration to it, and, frankly, we don’t believe Vermonters support it.’”
Now, if you believe Mr. Zicconi, then the new policy is going to result in a storm of McDonald’s billboards and lead to the degradation of this state’s beautiful scenery.
But here’s what the exemption actually says (bullets added):
The following signs are exempt from the requirements: Murals that relate exclusively to a downtown…whether located within or outside the designated downtown itself, provided that all of the following apply:
- the mural is hand-painted;
- it is painted directly on the outside surface of a structure that has been in existence on the site for at least the preceding 25 years;
- it is located no more than three miles from the designated downtown;
- its placement has been authorized by the legislative body of the municipality in which it is located;
- and any words used pertain only to the direction or distance to, and the name of, the designated downtown.
Now, be serious: Does that sound like it will lead to a ton of new billboards in the state? No. It sounds like, at most, we may have a bunch of hand-painted murals that promote the downtowns of our fair state. Look at the Bellows Falls “billboard” again. It’s a piece of art that fits into its surrounding elements. It doesn’t harm the scenery. It improves it.
What’s more, any new mural has to be approved by the people who live in the town where it’s painted. Can we not trust our fellow Vermonters to make the decisions that make the most sense for their town? Do we really need Montpelier to tell our villages and towns that they can’t paint murals on their buildings?
This bill isn’t the end of Vermont’s beauty. It’s an extension of it. The beauty of our artists and the beauty of our small democracy. What I love about this bill is how Vermont it is.
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To be fair, the Burlington Free Press, among others, says it’s not so much the law that’s pissing people off as much as its the way it was a last-minute introduction into the state’s $415 million Transportation bill. They don’t disagree with the law; they disagree with the lack of public debate.
I can agree with that.