"There is a growing feeling abroad in this land today that ugliness has been allowed too long, that it is time to say 'enough' and act."
Lady Bird Johnson, the former first lady, used those words to launch an assault on some 700,000 billboards that were torn down after her husband, Lyndon Baines Johnson, exercised his clout as president of the United States and, as a gift to his wife, high-hurdled the Highway Beautification Act through the U.S. Congress in 1965.
There were more than a million billboards along the country's major highways pre-1965. Today, thanks to the Johnson Act, which tore out great chunks of billboards in noncommercial areas, there are fewer than 500,000. Four states — Hawaii, Alaska, Vermont and Maine — don't have any billboards along their roadways whatsoever.
I bring up Lady Bird Johnson's activism in light of the Salt Lake County Council's decision this week to throttle down the billboard industry in the county. By a 6-3 vote, the council agreed, pending final approval next week, to adopt something called a cap-and-bank system, and while it's true, not a single billboard will be toppled as a result, at least it's a start.
Cap-and-bank is a politician's term for capping billboard density at its present level and allowing any billboards torn down in the future to be replaced in another approved location within a three-year time limit. That means all existing billboards are similar to negotiable assets in a bank — available to be withdrawn and spent elsewhere.
Cap-and-bank might not reduce the billboard population, but it guarantees it will never get any bigger.
The council rejected an outright ban on new billboards. Some council members suggested a ban would give billboard companies no incentive to tear down any board they could not replace, no matter how offensive its location. Cap-and-bank, it was argued, if weakly, has the potential for not only better-placed signs but fewer overall signs in the long run.
That may explain why the council favored cap-and-bank — or it could have something to do with the fact that of nine members on the council, five admitted to receiving campaign contributions from the billboard industry, and all nine admitted to talking with billboard lobbyists.
So the Salt Lake County Council's punch is no Lady Bird punch. She took on the billboards like a Texas tornado. As she said in her memoirs, "I guess I'm no friend of the billboard folks." She didn't just get new billboard construction banned. She got a lot of billboards torn down.
That's a nice thought for the Salt Lake Valley. Zero billboards. Nothing in the way but the big western sky and the Rocky Mountains — and maybe a little temperature inversion every now and then.
I became a big fan of billboard-free living when I resided for a time in Santa Barbara, Calif. Billboards are not permitted there, and over time it's amazing how much more you feel a part of a place when you constantly look at the place as you travel around, instead of at ads telling you how great Wendover is this time of year.
It would have been cool if the County Council had voted to tear down all the billboards in Salt Lake County — cool but also unfair to the billboard companies that have erected their inventory entirely within the law.
At least the council said enough is enough, which is what Lady Bird Johnson said, sort of.
Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.