Feds Issue Statement Countering Report About Endangered Times Square Billboards

The theatre magazine Playbill quotes CEI's Marc Scribner on the outdated legislation threatening Times Square's billboards: 

The Washington Post reported, "The threat to Times Square’s billboards is not the fault of the Obama administration or Transportation Department bureaucrats" and quoted Marc Scribner of the politically conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute as saying the move “is a classic example of Congress passing stupid laws, ordering regulators to implement them stupidly, and then forgetting about them until unintended consequences spring up down the line.”

Scribner pinned down the law as the surface transportation reauthorization (MAP-21 Act of 2012), Section 1104, which added arterial roads such as those that pass through Times Square as part of an “enhanced National Highway System" that is subject to the Highway Beautification Act of 1965. That act imposes federal restrictions on outdoor advertisements within 660 feet of the National Highway System.