Mount Laurel to be honored as a billboard-free zone

Mount Laurel Township, long synonymous with landmark court cases mandating affordable housing, can also lay claim as a town that pushed back against billboards.

On Monday, the national beautification group Scenic America will honor the town's leaders and residents for successfully defending the right of municipalities to restrict billboards within their borders.

The national organization's president, Mary Tracy, is to present its Stafford Award to the township at Monday's council meeting.

Named for former U.S. Sen. Robert Stafford of Vermont, the award recognizes civic efforts in support of scenic conservation.

In February, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, based in Philadelphia, upheld Mount Laurel's 2008 ban on billboards along its lengths of the New Jersey Turnpike and I-295.

The court affirmed the township's position that "billboards affect traffic safety and aesthetics" and that a municipality has the right to regulate them.

Mount Laurel's success "serves as inspiration and motivation to people and towns all over the country who want to protect themselves from billboard blight," Scenic America said Thursday in announcing the award.

Interstate Outdoor Advertising L.P., a regional billboard company based in Cherry Hill, had asked the town's zoning board for permission to erect four billboards along I-295, but was turned down.

Interstate sued and presented an expert witness who argued that the incidence of accidents along I-295 in Mount Laurel was so low that a billboard ban was unwarranted.

The court responded that the lack of billboards might be "the precise reason the accident rate is so low," and upheld the ban.

Interstate Outdoor's chief executive, Drew Katz, is a director of Interstate General Media (IGM), which owns The Inquirer. His father, Lewis Katz, founded Interstate Outdoor and is a partner in IGM.

Attorney Christopher Norman, counsel for Mount Laurel's planning board, noted Thursday that the U.S. Supreme Court has long upheld the right of a local government to "implement a billboard ban to promote traffic safety and aesthetics, provided that the ban is implemented in a content-neutral fashion."

Norman, who represented the town in its billboard case, said the Third Circuit's decision supported the right of governments within its jurisdiction - New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and the U.S. Virgin Islands - to ban billboards for those reasons.

Despite Interstate's contention that Mount Laurel would inhibit free speech in violation of the First Amendment, "Mount Laurel Council stood firm by its conviction to ... retain its long-standing billboard-free character," said Norman.

In 1975, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled against Mount Laurel and in favor of plaintiffs who alleged the township's zoning laws were written to exclude low-income people from obtaining housing. The court later issued a broad set of guidelines, known as the Mount Laurel Doctrine, requiring townships to provide affordable housing for low- and middle-income groups.

Max Ashburn, communications director for Scenic America, said the 30-year-old nonprofit, based in Washington, also advocated in favor of tree ordinances and conserving scenic byways, and for restricting the placement of telecommunications towers and utility wires.

"But we're best known," he said, "for fighting billboards."