Doesn't Work Passed in 1965, the HBA is the only federal environmental regulation that requires taxpayers to pay the polluter to stop polluting. Loopholes have made the HBA little more than a Billboard Protection and Proliferation Act. In many states, a single general store could generate six 1200 square-foot billboards, a total of 7200 square feet of sign space, roughly four times the size of an average house. In many states, activists report that sign companies have built sham businesses to secure the necessary state permit. The HBA makes it virtually impossible to remove nonconforming billboards.
Amortization is a commonly used method of billboard removal.
Despite amortization's fairness and the repeated court rulings that it is constitutional, the billboard lobby convinced Congress in 1978 to prohibit amortization along interstate and federal-aid primary highways. Thus, nonconforming billboards are protected under the HBA unless state and local governments pay taxpayer money to remove them. According to the Federal Highway Administration, the prohibition of amortization has kept over 38,000 billboards standing despite local ordinances seeking to remove them. No one knows how much removal would cost. The billboard industry uses a set of standardized tactics to defeat regulation attempts.