Legislation that would allow billboard companies to clear-cut state-owned trees in front of their signs passed unanimously Thursday in the Senate Transportation Committee. A vote on the Senate floor is expected next week.
The same measure has already passed the House.
Billboard owners say trees obscure their signs, impairing a legal business and endangering jobs. Environmentalists say the trees are a state asset that help the environment, and that they already compromised with the billboard owners long ago.
Billboard owners currently can cut down smaller trees but not the largest ones.
Department of Transportation rules say that in mowable areas the billboard companies would have to grind the stumps level with the ground. On nonmowable slopes, they wold have to cut them down to 3 inches or less.
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