Memo to politicians: Here’s your sign

Whether “sign walkers,” people usually found on local street corners holding up signs directing you to some everything-must-go furniture sale or a new condo project seeking buyers, can be entirely banned by municipal ordinances is the subject of a second attempt at fashioning a state law on the subject in two years.

The impetus for this effort is Scottsdale’s recent actions to ban all political signs from its rights of way and stepped-up enforcement of the city’s 35-year-old ban on sign walkers as an offshoot of Scottsdale’s well-known anti-billboard ordinance.

Last year, after a Scottsdale business owner who hired sign walkers was cited, he went to the state Legislature.

House Bill 2369 passed both the state House and Senate, but Gov. Janet Napolitano vetoed it, saying it did not allow cities enough latitude to regulate such speech to ensure safety on the streets.

This year, as the Tribune reported Monday, the sponsor of last year’s bill, Rep. Bob Robson, R-Chandler, is trying again. The current version includes language that while outlawing a total sign walking ban, would still allow cities to “adopt reasonable time, place and manner regulations relating to sign walkers for public safety purposes.”

The trouble, of course, with Scottsdale’s law is that it’s not based so much on safety as it is on — no surprise given that it’s Scottsdale — aesthetics.

Safety sells much better than appearance, and city officials claim with straight faces that somehow in this day and age of texting and cell phone talking while driving, someone slowly rocking a “Starting In The Low $400,000s” sign back and forth on the corner has a high propensity for causing accidents.

Of course, we know of no statistics to support this. Anecdotally, it’s unlikely you’ll hear some defendant in traffic court pleading, “The crash wasn’t my fault! I just couldn’t take my eyes off those words … ‘50 Percent Off’ … ‘Today Only’ … ‘50 Percent Off’ …”

Notable is that this idea has not motivated a city code enforcement squad to crack down on fund-raising high school students waving signs on weekends trying to persuade motorists to pull into a gas station so they can wash cars in exchange for donations.

If this year’s House Bill 2066 passes the Legislature and is signed by Napolitano, cities such as Scottsdale should confine their “reasonable time, place and manner restrictions” to true, provable safety considerations that will allow sign walkers to reasonably exercise their First Amendment rights.

It may be easy to conclude that the signs these walkers carry are often garish, even inapplicable to the consumer needs of passing motorists. But they must attract enough customers or no business would find it worthwhile to hire walkers and pay to create the signs in the first place.