At the beginning of every political campaign season, the city of Port Angeles has told political candidates: Keep your signs off public property.
But last July 22, that changed.
The city, after a review of state case law, decided it could no longer remove campaign signs from rights of way along public streets.
The move, the City Hall staff said, puts Port Angeles in compliance with a 1993 state Supreme Court ruling that found the city of Tacoma violated a candidate’s constitutional rights by removing his signs from parking strips — those grassy areas between streets and sidewalks that are publicly owned.
But it also highlights discrepancies in how governments on the North Olympic Peninsula interpret the 17-year-old judgment and how the case doesn’t appear to resolve fully the questions regarding where citizens have the right to promote their political beliefs in sign form.
For instance, Jefferson County and the city of Port Townsend both said they base their regulations regarding placement of political signs on the case, Collier v. Tacoma.
Port Townsend interprets the ruling to justify banning the placards from the publicly owned rights-of-way alongside its streets.
Yet Jefferson County said the same case requires it to allow signs along streets so a person’s constitutional right to free expression isn’t compromised.
The issue doesn’t get any less murky in Clallam County.
The cities of Forks and Sequim allow the signs to be placed along their streets — roundabouts excluded — but the county doesn’t in unincorporated territory.
Pat Mason, senior legal consultant for the Municipal Research and Services Center of Washington, said he’s not surprised that there is a lack of consistency on the North Olympic Peninsula.
That’s because the issues addressed in the Collier case — seen as pre-eminent case law on placement of campaign signs in Washington — were too specific to settle the larger issue of where local governments allow them.
In the case, the high court ruled that Tacoma could not prevent a candidate from placing campaign signs in a parking strip 60 days before an election.
It found that they are a “traditional public forum” and not subject to such a restriction.
Yet the ruling did not address whether other public rights-of-way also fall under that category, Mason said — and more importantly, if a local government can simply ban outright the signs from all public property.
“It answers one question but raises several others not entirely resolved,” he said.
“In some sense, we might have to wait for another court case to know.”
Underlining the lack of a consensus even further on the Collier case is Ronald Collins, a University of Washington law professor specializing in free speech laws.
Collins said the Supreme Court ruling requires local governments to allow political signs in parking strips — while allowing for certain safety and aesthetic restrictions — and took issue with city ordinances like the one in Port Townsend that bans the placement of the placards on all public property, including parking strips.
“Given what the court says, I think it’s a fair inference to say that the city . . . cannot prohibit anybody from putting up these signs,” he said, referring to the designation of parking strips as a traditional public forum.
John Watts, city attorney for Port Townsend, disagrees.
“That’s not exactly what they ruled, as I understand it,” he said.
Watts said the city can prohibit political signs from public property as long as the same rule applies to all signs, including ones advertising a business or even a garage sale.
That’s the same policy the city of Port Angeles has on its books, although it has chosen not to enforce it until the issue can be reviewed by the City Council after the general election.
“As long as we’re not discriminating or allowing one type of sign and not another . . . then we’re fine,” he said.
But that interpretation ends at the city limit.
During an interview last week, Jefferson County Engineer Monte Reinders specifically cited the Collier case when explaining why his staff doesn’t remove campaign signs from the rights of way of public roads, whether or not the property would fit the definition of a parking strip.
“Collier is the main reason,” he said.
“From a public works point of view, our only concern is going to be safety. To make sure that the signs don’t impact the usefulness of the right of way for its intended purpose.”
Concerns for traffic safety, Rick Sepler, director of development services for the city of Port Townsend, said, is why the city bans all political signs from rights of way and other public property.
Collins said Jefferson County’s policy is more in line with the Collier ruling, which he says allows local governments to still regulate the placement of the signs within parking strips to ensure they don’t block traffic signs or become so numerous that they become a visual nightmare.
“The city just can’t make a blanket assertion, like safety or aesthetics” to ban them completely, he said.
“They can’t use them as magic mantras.”
Collins said he believes the same rues would apply to parking stirps, in a city or unincorporated area.
Asked about the issue, state Supreme Court Justice Susan Owens, the former North Olympic Peninsula judge, said she couldn’t comment on specific policies or if it applies to counties, but she added that she thinks the case would “pretty significant precedent.”
But does either county on the Peninsula even have parking strips in unincorporated areas?
Staff with the public works departments in Clallam and Jefferson counties said they are unaware of either county having a parking strip, particularly since there are few sidewalks outside of cities.
“We probably have got a few more neighborhood trails . . . that’s about the closes thing we have to a sidewalk,” said Ross Tyler, Clallam County engineer.
Which got him thinking: aren’t there grassy areas in some places between those paved trials and county roads?
Could that be considered a parking strip and, therefore, a traditional public forum?
To which he responded to himself that he may have to think twice about removing political signs from those areas — at least until the issue is clarified.
“If there’s a Supreme Court decision that allows them, then obviously someone could challenge us on that one,” Tyler said.
“I’ll certainly keep that in mind in the future.”
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.