Kill those monsters!

Monster billboards, that is! Legislators and government officials are now falling all over themselves in their mad rush to stamp out these public nuisances. When Typhoon Milenyo made short work of these ostensibly high and mighty steel structures, these officials suddenly saw the wisdom of Metro Manila Development Authority chair Bayani Fernando’s crusade to ban the behemoths from public thoroughfares.

A bill has been filed in the Senate by Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago to ban certain oversized billboards. The President certified that bill as urgent and has issued her own Administrative Order No. 160 to dismantle all billboards that pose imminent danger to life, health, safety and property of the general public.

The Secretary of the Department of Public Works and Highways is the designated enforcer of AO 160, with the assistance of the MMDA and local governments. The Secretary may also call upon the police to help dismantle offending billboards.

Senator Santiago has confidently declared the lack of any more future for giant billboards. Fat chance they can be used again, she says. The Senator advises their owners to sell them as junk, rather than wait for the government to "expropriate" them.

I doubt though that the said owners will roll over and play dead, the current public outcry notwithstanding. If the past is prologue, it is likely we’ll get more strenuous argument over whether the billboards can summarily be dismantled by the government without giving the owners an opportunity to be heard. The alleged denial of "due process" can be expected to be asserted time and time again by the owners.

It’s not that the government does not have the right to summarily, or without need of judicial proceedings, "abate" or remove what it declares to be a "public nuisance." It clearly does. But the Supreme Court has ruled in at least one case that the owner’s "basic" right to due process must not be violated.

In the absence of an approved piece of legislation – Sen. Santiago’s Senate Bill No. 1714 is still pending in Congress – the government’s legal authority for removing billboards must be based on the National Building Code (Presidential Decree No. 1096, February 19, 1977), the rules and regulations implementing the law, AO 160 and provisions of the Civil Code on Nuisance.

As noted above, AO 160, issued October 4, 2006, directs the DPWH Secretary to dismantle billboards posing imminent danger to the life, health, safety and property of the public; those violating applicable laws, rules and regulations (principally the National Building Code, Structural Code of the Philippines, implementing rules and regulations, and related legal issuances); and billboards constructed within the "easement of road right of way" (meaning, essentially, along public thoroughfares).

These grounds are not as cut-and-dried as they may appear. A lot of involved and very technical debates will probably take place over whether provisions of the National Building Code governing the design and construction of signs have been complied with.

For example, the Outdoor Advertisers Association of the Philippines swears that all its members are in compliance with statutory requirements and have met all conditions of local ordinances. But the OAAP admits it can only speak for its members. More than two-thirds of all companies engaged in billboard advertising are not members of the Association. The group supports tougher government regulation, provided it is consulted in the discussion and drafting of new regulations.

Note that among the matters that the DPWH Secretary is mandated to investigate is whether some billboards were constructed without the necessary permits. This puts local building and permits officials under the gun. There have long been nasty rumors about money being passed under the table to "facilitate" favorable treatment of defective applications. The Secretary’s investigation will reveal whether government is serious in its efforts to put billboards under more meaningful control.

Under the Civil Code, it is possible to abate a public nuisance without judicial proceedings, meaning a city or municipality need not go to court to remove a public nuisance (Article 699). A public nuisance is defined in the Code as one which affects a community or neighborhood or any considerable number of persons, even if the annoyance, danger or damage upon individuals may be unequal (Art. 695).

In AO 160, it is specified that the abatement and dismantling of billboards found to be within national highways and major thoroughfares in Metro Manila and key cities must be accomplished by the DPWH "in accordance with law."

This means that owners of such billboards must be given an opportunity to be heard. Even in summary abatement without judicial proceedings, the Supreme Court requires that due process be observed.

What all this means is that while we all anticipate that the billboard jungle in Metro Manila will be cleared immediately, it isn’t likely that will happen. Owners will probably dispute any findings that they have violated laws and regulations regulating billboards. Despite suspicions of shenanigans, most owners will likely be able to pull out local permits to construct the billboards out of their hats.

And what about those billboards constructed on private properties? Most billboards are built either inside private property lines, or atop privately-owned buildings, thus enabling owners to argue that they are not covered by the National Building Code.

However, many billboards built on private property collapsed in the recent typhoon or now stand naked in the wind. The signs on them were either taken down before the storm, or stripped from their steel frames by high winds. This situation has presented regulators with a rare opportunity to tighten the rules a lot more.

Stricter regulations can be put in place which might, for instance, require that billboards on private properties be of such size and height that, in the event of any collapse, the structure must fall entirely within that property and not on any public thoroughfare, pedestrian walkway or any structure in an adjoining property.

New regulations might also require that all billboards and their supporting steel structures withstand wind gusts of up to 240 kilometers per hour. Previous limits were much lower and failed to take into account recent recorded strengths of typhoons that have passed the Philippine area of responsibility.

Finally, the new law and amended regulations must unequivocally prohibit any billboards alongside public thoroughfares. The ambiguity of current regulations on this score has opened a gaping loophole which billboard owners have exploited to the hilt.