Few items stick deeper in the craw than special-interest legislation aimed at undermining the good-faith community-improvement efforts of local leaders. One such effort is the billboard-control ordinance that Myrtle Beach City Council enacted in 1995, an ordinance that was supposed to take full effect last year.

It didn't take effect because the two 800-pound gorillas of outdoor advertising in Myrtle Beach, ClearChannel and Coastal Outdoor Advertising, filed a last-minute lawsuit to stymie it.

Burroughs & Chapin Co. Inc., Coastal Advertising corporate parent, dropped out of the lawsuit earlier this month, apparently to grease the skids for city approval of a sign plan for the Mall of South Carolina. A federal court will decide whether there is merit in ClearChannel's claim that the city owes compensation for the billboards that would be removed or downsized and that the ordinance violates First Amendment commercial speech protections.

But now, in Columbia, comes Sen. Hugh Leatherman, R-Florence, with a bill that would change the rules under which City Council enacted the ordinance. Billboard companies love Leatherman's bill, which would require cities wishing to remove visual pollution to compensate monetarily billboard companies for their inconvenience.

Current S.C. law does require compensation of a sort. Rather than allowing cities such as Myrtle Beach to say "Take down or downsize your billboards now," the law requires a lengthy waiting period before an ordinance can take effect. Giving sign companies time to adjust to the new requirements is a form of compensation. They can amortize losses by adjusting gradually to the rules.

Rather than adjust to the ordinance between 1995 and 2002, the two local 800-pound gorillas arrogantly ran out the clock. Then, via the lawsuit filing, they hollered like stuck hogs that City Council had trashed their rights, hours before the ordinance was to take effect.

Myrtle Beach legislators Sen. Luke Rankin and Rep. Alan Clemmons should lead the Horry County legislative delegation in fighting Leatherman's bill, a similar version of which is slated for introduction in the S.C. House. It would be an outrage for the General Assembly to change the rules on which the city banked its hopes for creating a more orderly visual environment.