Lamar, Pittsburgh officials accuse each other of bullying tactics

Tensions between Lamar Advertising and Pittsburgh are spilling into more neighborhoods, each side tagging the other as a bully.

Mayor Bill Peduto’s office vented claims Tuesday that the company is stifling a Homewood infrastructure project and a Lawrenceville community group. Such moves appear designed to pressure the administration in several disputes, including over the vinyl Sprint banner atop Mount Washington, mayoral aide Kevin Acklin said.

“They’re mad,” said Mr. Acklin, who is Mr. Peduto’s chief of staff. He called it “an expression of bad faith for a corporation to threaten organizations in the City of Pittsburgh who are trying to do the right thing — to invest in neighborhoods like Homewood — because they don’t like the fact that this administration is enforcing the city’s laws.”

Mr. Acklin said Lamar and the city remain at odds over a billboard tax and an agreement to handle bus shelters, not to mention the iconic Mount Washington sign. The company covered a decades-old electric display with a Sprint banner there in May 2016. A freshened banner for the communications company appeared last week — again in violation of city rules, according to the Peduto administration. Litigation is pending.

Over the past several weeks, Lamar has pulled back from the Nine Mile Run Watershed Association, which is working toward better stormwater

management in Homewood, and from a Lawrenceville Corp. deal to remove a billboard there, according to the administration. The company also declined to renew a property-related agreement with a small-business owner on Mount Washington, Mr. Acklin said.

He said the company directed all three parties to call Mr. Peduto’s office. But Jonathan Kamin, Lamar’s attorney, accused the city of being the aggressor in the battle over the billboards.

Lamar is rethinking support for projects in Lawrenceville and Homewood because if it removes billboards to aid that work, it fears it may not be able to replace them elsewhere because of “mayoral aggression” over such signs, Mr. Kamin said.

“The current erratic behavior of the city, including canceling several leases that Lamar had with the Urban Redevelopment Authority for decades, has led us to the conclusion that we have to be very cautious as to how we approach business in the city,” he said.

Lamar recently was notified “out of nowhere,” Mr. Kamin said, that the URA would be canceling those leases, which involved the placement of billboards on URA-owned properties.

The leases, he said, generated $30,000 to $40,000 a year for the URA.

“These are leases where the URA didn’t have to do anything but collect a check,” Mr. Kamin said. “The URA’s behavior is consistent with the mayor trying to regulate our speech and to destroy our property rights. These additional URA lease terminations have made us be very careful about having to protect our city inventory as a buffer from further mayoral aggression.”

Given that the city “is trying to raise revenue from every source it can,” the decision to cancel the leases is “irrational and I would call it vindictive,” Mr. Kamin said.

In such a climate, Lamar couldn’t commit to removing billboards for the Lawrenceville and Homewood projects without the assurance that it would be able to replace them elsewhere.

Billboards generate revenue for Lamar, and the company can’t keep cutting the number without facing financial consequences, Mr. Kamin said. The company, he added, has eliminated 300 billboards during the past 15 years.

“In order to have a viable business, I have to have advertising. With the city’s erratic behavior and what I’m calling mayoral aggression, it certainly makes you think about your future,” he said.

In response to Mr. Kamin’s comments about the URA leases, Mr. Acklin stated: “[The] URA has determined to not renew leases for four billboards that were in high-profile locations, thereby reducing billboard pollution. There is nothing erratic about this decision, and it is consistent with community discussions for several years with residents who want to remove ugly billboards from their neighborhoods.”