Billboards contribute to the visual blight that makes living in and visiting the Grand Strand and South Carolina less pleasant than it should be. This week, the S.C. House takes up a bill that could make it virtually impossible for cities, towns and counties to beautify themselves. The measure would require local governments to pay the owners of billboards and the land on which they sit an estimated $100,000 to $1 million - maybe more - to take down or relocate offending billboards.

Under the bill's curious calculus, the harder a local government tried to impose visual order alongside its streets, the more local taxpayers would be forced to pay for billboard removal and relocation. Attribute this unfairness to the bill's methodology for calculating a targeted billboard's compensation value. But the bill would not allow local governments to use that same methodology in calculating the property taxes on billboards and land.

Five local bill sponsors think such further weakening local control over billboards is a good idea: Republican Reps. Liston Barfield, Alan Clemmons, Tracy Edge, Billy Witherspoon and Thad Viers. The gentlemen's districts have more than their share of rectangular roadside blight. So their constituents may have a hard time understanding why they want to tilt the playing field in favor of outdoor advertising firms and billboard landowners, the special interests behind this bill.

Current S.C. law allows local governments to phase out billboards without compensation over seven years. In place of that method, the measure would require a local government to pay the billboard owner the cost of relocating it to a site of equal or better quality. As well - get this - local governments would have to compensate billboard companies for the down time it takes to dismantle, move and reinstall an offending billboard.

What if a local government wanted just to get rid of the billboard? It would have to compensate the owners for the market value of the sign and land it occupies. On top of these costs, the bill requires the local government also to pay:

The landowner for the "economic utility" of the land on which the sign sits - its use value for some other purpose.

The billboard company for the sign's lost "productivity" - the revenue it might have earned had it been left in place.

If local governments could tax billboards and billboard land according to that same principle - their income-earning potential - these compensation add-ons might make sense. But current law, which the bill does not address, allows local governments to tally property taxes on billboards and land only according to market value.

What we have here, in short, is a formula for punishing local government leaders for even thinking about making their roadways more attractive. If legislators are determined to render local governments powerless to remove billboards, they should at least allow governments to tax billboards fairly. If Viers, Witherspoon, Clemmons, Edge and Barfield want to balance constituents' interests against the interests of the outdoor advertising lobby, they will assist in making this happen.