EDITORIAL BILLBOARD BLIGHT SOMEONE OUGHT TO FIGHT BACK AGAINST SCOFFLAW INDUSTRY.

LOS Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo is about as unlikely a candidate for Battler of Billboard Blight as they come.

This is the man, after all, who got elected to his current office in 2001 largely thanks to more than $400,000 worth of donated billboard advertising. Remember when ROCKY was everywhere?

And just in the past year he was criticized for settling a billboard lawsuit rather than fighting it.

Still, if he's got the urge to bite the hand that once fed him -- the wealthy billboard industry that he says "ignores our laws" -- then more power to him.

No one else in Los Angeles' leadership has had the guts to stand firm against a pushy scofflaw industry that has contributed to the aesthetic discord of many neighborhood thoroughfares in Los Angeles.

That's clear from the city's skyline, which is marred by more than 10,000 billboards hawking items from cars to fast food and everything in between.

Actually, Delgadillo is seeking more of a whack than a bite. He wants a new state law that would give him the "legal hammer" to smack down illegal billboards in the city.

That hammer is to come in the form of Senate Bill 563, sponsored by state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas, which would allow local governments to order billboards removed after giving the companies time to amortize their costs.

The bill also would fix current law that allows illegal billboards to remain in place if the city takes more than five years to identify and cite them.

The city's elected representatives have for too long let the billboard companies push them around, perhaps because they contribute so handsomely to their campaigns and hire well-connected lobbyists who operate so freely in the back rooms of City Hall.

They passed a law in 1980 to phase out billboards along a stretch of Wilshire Boulevard. More than a quarter-decade later, billboards still line the street. And billboard companies know they can flaunt the laws with impunity, which explains clearly how inappropriate billboards in residential front yards are a not-uncommon sight in Los Angeles.

With an eye toward a future political campaign, Delgadillo could well be using his billboard-whacking ploy as an attention-getting stunt. The test will be his ability to marshal political support for his effort.