City relents in banner case

Jose Paul Corona

Admitting defeat, the City Council has decided to repeal its law

that bans planes towing banners from flying over the city after the

Federal Aviation Administration asserted its authority over airspace.

It will take an official vote to repeal on Nov. 18.

“It is disappointing,” said Councilwoman Connie Boardman, who

first introduced the law in answer to residents’ complaints of noise

and safety.

Shortly after the ordinance -- modeled after a similar Honolulu

law -- was passed, The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, an

anti-abortion group, sued the city to overturn the ban, which it said

violated its 1st Amendment rights.

As hearings began two weeks ago the FAA stepped in and said that

it, and not the cities, controls airspace.

The federal agency cited a regulation it amended to delete

language that spokesman Jerry Snyder said governments misinterpreted

as the right to regulate airspace over cities.

The regulation change prevents the council from being able to

defend the law in court, Boardman said.

“What [the FAA] has done is pull the rug out from beneath our

ordinance,” she said. “Our ordinance isn’t very defendable.”

That is just what Gregg Cunningham, executive director of the

anti-abortion group, was counting on.

“I was very confident that this federal agency would not want to

yield its legal authority to tens of thousands of municipalities

across the country, because that would create pandemonium,”

Cunningham said.

The group had been taking a “dual track strategy” against the law,

he said. By suing the city, the group prevented the law from being

enforced, while at the same time lobbying the FAA to “clarify their

administrative ruling,” Cunningham said.

FAA officials didn’t have much to say about the council’s

decision, but Bob Dobry, owner of Long Beach-based Aerial Promotions

Inc., did.

“The FAA controls airspace,” said Dobry, who disagreed with

allegations that banner towing planes are noisy and unsafe.

“The big noisemaker in Huntington Beach is Connie Boardman,” Dobry

said. “She needs to talk about things that are more important in

Huntington Beach.”

If the planes were noisy and unsafe, he wouldn’t be flying them,

Dobry added.

Councilman Ralph Bauer, the sole voice of opposition on the

council, said he knew the law wouldn’t fly with the federal agency,

but was amazed at the FAA’s speedy actions.

“It didn’t surprise me at all,” Bauer said. “It surprised me that

it came that quickly.”

With the law slated to be repealed at the council’s next meeting

on Nov. 18, Cunningham is now focusing his attention on Honolulu.

“We’re giving them notice of [our] intent to sue if they don’t

repeal [their law],” Cunningham said.

* JOSE PAUL CORONA covers City Hall and education. He can be

reached at (714) 965-7173 or by e-mail at [email protected].