” If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech.”

The Constitution trumps local & state laws. Political signs are a form of written speech and the ruling clearly states that the corporations should not have their political speech curtailed by the government.

How does that relate to this issue???

The Mayor spoke against signage as he is concerned about “sign polution”. As evidence of a growing sign polution problem, he commented on the large number of poltical signs on business properties which he stated were in violation of city ordinances.

(Hoping that comment shows up in the minutes in case he decides to run again for Mayor – as last time he had no problem with signs on business properties then)

After I saw that banner on a tax funded office I was expecting a Tipple campaign mailer in my water and tax bill as well. He already campaigns for free in the city newsletter that I have to pay for.

It’s obvious why anything on Hadley’s lot is focused on by City Hall. I think you got hit by the flak.

Just some things I want to clarify.

- I was not told about the signs being a violation of city code last week, that happened this week.

- The land in question is not MY land, it is owned by the company I work for. I was speaking on behalf of the company.

- The article expressed this issue in a much more confrontational “me vs the city” manner than this entire situation was. Bill Hebert of the inspections department called me. We know each other because we work on the Housing Task Force together. It was a civil conversation. Basically I said I would need to see the law in question before I complied with it, and he told me where to find it. We even discussed how I understood he was just doing his job of following up on a complaint and how much I did not envy his job of trying to enforce this ordinance.

- I am not this “take a stand against city hall activist” on this particular issue that the article portrays me to be. The city asked me to do something, they showed me the city law that applies… and instead of blindly complying, I blogged about it wondering out loud if there was a federal law that trumped the city law.

The last time I did an interview with Channel 9 was when the Housing Task Force’s Rent Abatement Ordiance was before the city council. Committee Chair Lisa Rasmussen and myself did the rounds promoting this new ordiance as one more tool to help fight housing blight. All media outlets we talked to reported the news, but Channel 9 apparantly wanted to make it more of a sensaional story, so they took a statement of mine out of context to imply that landlords could use the new abatement code to jack up rents and kick poor tenants out. (They left out my comment that such retalitiory behavior would violate state law).

Other news outlets who have used me as a source for stories (Chanel 7, the Wausau Daily Herald, City Pages, AM 550), have not tried to sensationalize things, and have simply reported on the story. So therefore, I will still respond to their calls for comment. But, I think I am going to let Channel 9 go to find other people and issues to over-react to.