What billboard industry wants can’t be legalized

The Georgia House may vote today on whether to allow billboard companies more freedom to cut down and remove trees along state highways.

Senate Bill 164 was written by and for the billboard industry. If it passes, a wave of tree cutting will sweep the highways of Georgia.

Roadside trees help clean the air along the roads. Trees and other plants clean water that collects and runs onto and off of roadways. These right of way trees are natural living communities protecting valuable public property.

Georgia courts have found that when they are removed for the benefit of a private individual or business, the state must be paid the full value of the lost property. To do any less would be considered a gratuity, which is prohibited under our state constitution.

The taxpayers have built a network of public highways that enables billboard owners to make money renting their signs to advertisers. The billboard owners owe the public for making their business possible.

The billboard industry doesn’t see it that way. They think they ought to be able to pay a nominal fee, with no regard to what those trees may be worth to their public owners.

Billboards have been raised higher and higher so that trees can’t block motorists’ views of them. Now billboard owners prefer lower, cheaper signs, but they need to remove our trees so the lower signs can be seen.

Georgia law allows them to lower the signs and to trim the trees so that the signs can be seen from the highways. But the industry regards the law as “cumbersome.” The value of the trees they are taking has to be calculated, and they dislike the need to set the value of the people’s property. Their only worry is always the value of their own property, which would be worthless without the public’s massive investment in highways.

The industry has tried to disguise its plans for a chain saw party in front of 9,000 billboards by calling it a “pilot program.” They talk about “replanting vegetation,” which would not be needed if they simply trimmed instead of clear cut.

The billboard industry has decided that they must be allowed to destroy the public’s property in return for the payment of a nominal fee. In our state Constitution, there is a name for what the billboard industry wants: It is called a gratuity.

The Legislature cannot make lawful something that is plainly illegal by passing a bill like SB 164 that baldly declares that what was wrong is now right; no more than they can make a law that makes a billboard as lovely as a tree.

• Rep. Wendell Willard is a GOP House member from Fulton County. Rep. Stacey Abrams is a Democrat from DeKalb.