Court Opinion

ID: 9848478
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:20:34.767367+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:20.260824
License: Public Domain

*432Hill, J.
(dissenting) — I dissent. I see in the majority opinion only a very well written defense and justification of legislation which would never have been enacted if it had not been necessary to avoid a penalty in the terms of a reduction of federal aid for our highway program. The majority explains the situation clearly:
The principal differences between the 1958 and 1965 federal statutes, for the purposes of this opinion, are two. The 1965 law, instead of conditioning a bonus upon the recipient state’s signing an agreement with the Secretary of Commerce, imposes a penalty in terms of a reduction of federal aid if the state fails to make “provision for effective control” of outdoor advertising.
In short, we dance to the federal tune.
Our slips are showing only too plainly when we pontificate about getting rid of billboards within 660 feet of our interstate and defense highways to promote the public health, welfare, safety, convenience, and the enjoyment of public travel (not to mention the spiritual and aesthetic values referred to in the majority opinion), and then permit signs advertising activities being conducted within 12 miles of the point at which the signs are located. Does the fact that the activity being advertised is relatively close at hand make the sign less dangerous to the public health, safety, welfare, convenience, and the enjoyment of public travel (not to mention the effect upon spiritual and aesthetic values involved). Are we so devoid of all humanitarian and aesthetic instincts that we do not extend this beneficent protection of the public health, welfare, safety, convenience, ¡and the enjoyment of public travel (not forgetting the aesthetic and spiritual values) to those citizens who have to drive on our other state highways and our county roads? Are the travelers on such roads second class citizens whose health, welfare, safety, convenience, enjoyment, and aesthetic senses are to be neglected?
Insofar as protection of our scenic beauties are concerned, we are certainly beginning on the wrong highways. These “interstate and defense highways” are not located with regard to scenic beauties, but to the shortest, fastest *433feasible routes between centers of population. Our really scenic roads, such as Chuckanut Drive, are not protected by this legislation.
If there exists a public necessity for the removal of billboards from our highways, let us stop the pretense that we are operating under the police power, and condemn the right to erect billboards within a designated distance of our highways as we condemn access and other property rights.
Even the federal government manifests some concern for the property rights of an established and heretofore lawful business by offering to bear three-quarters of the cost of the payment of “just compensation” for the removal of existing signs; while we, motivated by the “federal bonus of ,% of 1 per cent” and the desire to save one-quarter of the cost of that removal, decide that no compensation is necessary because these established signs are a menace to the health, welfare, safety, convenience, and enjoyment of the traveling public and are likewise an affront to their spiritual and aesthetic values.
July 19, 1968. Petition for rehearing denied.