Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez, a tax-raising, subsidy-hunting, grant-writing kind of urban type, was awakened one morning by the voice of the Market God.
And God spoke to Eddie: “Find a contractor to take over the city’s bus shelters; let him spiff up the shelters, which look like they were swallowed by the same whale that swallowed Jonah — and then spit out; and then let him install billboards along I-91, especially near the garbage dump that Satan built — and charge him a few million bucks up front, and a nice, round six-figure annual rent.” These were the words of the Lord of Marketing.
Mayor Eddie was born again. After years of begging state government and charitable foundations and non-profit entities and businesses to pay for his pretend downtown and middling kind of city, Eddie experienced transcendence.
“Praise the Lord and be an entrepreneur,” Mayor Eddie said to his startled staff and even more startled circle of subsidy hangers-on. “We shall seek out the billboard merchants and we will sell and rent out sacred ground, because that is the word of the Lord of the Market.”
And so, Mayor Eddie went out among the non-believers, and spoke of billboards, of additional revenues for the city, of the joys of willing buyers and willing sellers coming together in a fashion that didn’t require a government subsidy to make it happen.
And those unchurched in the ways of the market, which is to say, almost anyone involved in civic life in Hartford, said, “nay, nay, we must not partake in the ways of the market. Better it shall be to raise property taxes or beg for more money from the state, than to put up billboards in return for filthy lucre.”
Erectile Dysfunction
It was as if Hartford had become Babel; the mayor and the citizenry were confused by language. When the head of the Greater Hartford Arts Council said that there was no support for “erection of new billboards,” all everyone heard was the word “erection,” which made them think of carnal knowledge; which made them think of the existing billboards along I-91, many of which hint at s-e-x emporiums and girls of dubious morals and big chests.
“Do not stray from the path of righteousness,” Mayor Eddie implored. “We will have Colgate toothpaste billboards, or Chevrolet billboards, or billboards advertising the stores in the Front Street development project, if God is ever good enough to us to actually put stores there.”
A theologian from the Seminary of Hard Knocks in Washington noted that there are few undecided Unitarians when it comes to billboards. Even as Mayor Eddie was doing God’s work, U.S. Senate majority leader Harry Reid was attempting to sneak an exemption into federal law that would have exempted certain billboards from the 1965 Highway Beautification Act, which has as its premise that too many billboards are butt-ugly. The exemption was uncovered at the last minute and consigned to the lower depths of Hell.
Billboards have had a long and weird history in court, with theologians in disagreement over whether, for instance, private property rights are sufficient to protect billboards from meddling politicians.
For a time, the politicians had to show a “public health and safety” kind of problem, before they could smite billboards like the mighty hand of God.
Things became more interesting when the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled in 1935 that the politician could simply decide to pretty up the neighborhood and dump a billboard. As the justices put it: “Grandeur and beauty of scenery contribute highly important factors to the public welfare.”
That seemed to be the rap on Mayor Eddie’s proposal. As City Councilman Robert Painter put it in the Hartford Courant, “Who has ever thought that billboards are an aesthetic advantage to the city?”
Of course, there was a time when the beauty of industrial cities such as Hartford was reflected in the crash and bang and shuffle of commerce in action. Billboards that welcome, that cajole, that invite visitors to partake of the bright lights, have their own kind of pretty purpose.
But Mayor Eddie isn’t going to get his billboards. The busybody, nonprofit plutocrats would rather turn the town into a static museum — if someone else will pay for it.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
