For the third year in a row, the billboard industry is trying to push a bill through the Legislature that would require local communities to pay a “scenic tax” if they try to remove the visual blight caused by billboards.

If House Bill 3381 passes, a new state law will require local governments to pay billboard companies “just compensation” when new zoning regulations require the removal of signs. According to the billboard industry and its friends in the Legislature, just compensation amounts to the cost of their signs plus future potential income.

The cost to taxpayers could be as much as $500,000 per sign, a cost that would make it financially impossible for local governments to clean up billboard clutter. And of course, this is what the industry wants — a statewide law that emasculates local governments and insulates the sign industry from attempts to control billboard blight.

Similar bills failed in the past two years when citizens and environmental and municipal groups objected to the idea of state government creating legislation that would give this controversial industry special treatment and undermine the concept of Home Rule. But this year the industry is doing a full-court press. It’s hired a new lobbying firm and persuaded at least 55 House members to co-sponsor the bill.

In a recent hearing before the House Labor, Commerce and Industry Committee, an executive for Lamar, the national billboard giant, said his industry is being unfairly “attacked” by local governments, who are forcing signs to come down.

But the mean ol’ government boogeyman responsible for these attacks is only the voice of citizens mad about the unchecked growth of this form of ambush advertising. It is the backlash of those who are tired of seeing the scenic roadways of South Carolina blighted by a medium they can’t personally regulate by changing the channel, turning the page or flipping the “off” switch.

The reality is that local governments are usually loath to take on the billboard industry because they know that if they try to clean up billboard blight they will get sued. What’s scaring the industry is that one city, Myrtle Beach, had the backbone to stand up to their threats.

Myrtle Beach is in Horry County, which has more than twice as many billboards as any other county in the state, according to S.C. Department of Transportation records. More than seven years ago the city passed tough zoning laws that required a number of these billboards to come down after a grace period, a process known as amortization.

When the amortization period ended, one company, Clear Channel, sued to force the city to leave its signs up. The city refused to back down, and the case was headed for the federal courts when Clear Channel and the city settled. The city agreed to let some signs stay, but Clear Channel agreed to take at least 20 down.

Had the proposed billboard protection act been in place, Myrtle Beach would have had to pay millions of taxpayer dollars, a scenic tax, to get these signs down.

Will local governments also have to pay just compensation to other undesirable businesses that are hurt by zoning laws? If we have to pay outlandish sums to get rid of billboards, what about sex shops and hog farms? Why an exception for the billboard industry?

This piece of legislation should be dropped once and for all. It’s corporate welfare at its worst, a sweetheart deal for an industry that is a lightning rod for controversy. If legislators wonder about public sentiment on this issue, I’d challenge them to tell the voters come next election that they worked hard to ensure that the billboards that litter our state’s roadsides never come down.

Mr. Kornegay is a member of the S.C. Scenic Highways Committee and an associate professor in the USC School of Journalism and Mass Communications.