On this week’s Billboard Insider podcast OAAA EVP Government Affairs, Mike Hershey talks about 6 out of home issues to watch. Here are the highlights.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:32 — 40.7MB)
Political Spending
Let’s compare 2020 to 2016…we saw an almost doubling in political campaign spending in the most recent presidential election. In 2020 we had $14.4 billion, a doubling from previous. US House and Senate races similarly saw a doubling of dollars – $8.7 billion spent just on house and Senate in 2020 versus $4.1 billion in 2016. …It’s a very tried and true way of getting name ID, furthering your message, maybe even countering an opponent and I think the digital platform…gives greater ease not only in getting up a positive message but countering…How are we positioned in 2022…we have some very, very competitive states…some very competitive senate races… I’ll give you one great data point spending January 2022 as compared to last year, out of home is up 31%…
Billboard Cases at Supreme Court
The obvious one is the city of Austin versus Reagan National. The case was heard by the court in November. The underlying issue is the constitutionality of the Austin ordinance and whether or not…they can treat an on-premise digital sign differently from an off-premise one. …We’re projecting a ruling some time in April or sometime in May.
There are two other cases of deep interest to us in the billboard industry that are pending…The city of Baltimore in 2013 levied a tax just on billboards…a few years later Cincinnati did the same. Those were challenged…and went up through their State Supreme Courts and were ruled differently…In Baltimore their authority and their tax was upheld. In Cincinnati their tax was struck down…The Supreme court seems to have taken both cases under consideration and are holding them presently. The thinking is that once they issue a ruling…in Austin Reagan they will also likely provide direction on the Baltimore and Cincinnati cases…
State budgets
States have has more revenue…they’ve had a lot of covid program funds that they’ve received…States find themselves…more flush with revenues than they have in decades…If you look back at the two tax cases that we’ve mentioned…those resulted from localities that were trying to look for ways to bring in money…Now with states flush with cash…it would seemingly take the…pressure off them to looking for ways to generate excess revenue…
Infrastructure Bill
The Infrastructure Act has $1.2 billion in funding priorities that would go from the federal government to the states…Everywhere that we are in advertising stands to gain through the federal investment…the federal government is making a big investment in electric vehicles…they want to use the interstate highway system and a network of fuel centers that already exist to try to have an electric vehicle charging station every 50 miles on the interstate highway system. So as an investment goes into alternative vehicles…they are looking at the backbone of interstate highways and places where we already have an advertising presence to achieve that…
Privacy
The state level has had more developments. Utah has just signed a privacy law. It’s the fourth state to do so. California, Virginia Colorado, now Utah. Iowa…may not be far behind in being the fifth state.
What’s new with cannabis?
The best way to answer that is to direct listeners to the OAAA website and a dynamic interactive map that we keep up to date which will allow you to click to a state and see what they have passed…
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