Schwab: Early sign postings could net candidate fine

Most candidates vying for political office are itching to start their campaigns.

Nevertheless, Terrebonne Parish President Don Schwab is promising to ensure that all campaign signs from candidates running in the Oct. 20 elections are not displayed before June 6.

A parish ordinance prohibits signs from being displayed 90 days before the period of candidate qualifying, which begins Sept. 4.

“I get calls all the time” from people complaining about campaign signs, Schwab said.

“We will strictly enforce” the ordinance, he said. “People need to stop doing it.”

He said that the law applies to signage placed on private property, as well as public rights-of-way.

“In fact, any such signs in public right-of-ways are never allowable under state law,” Schwab wrote in a news release.

He said that rights-of-way include telephone poles, neutral grounds, and passages claimed by utility companies.

The release was sent to “all law enforcement agencies” in Terrebonne Parish.

“We want all law enforcement agencies in the parish to do the same thing” concerning sign removal, Schwab said.

“I have to abide by the law,” he said. “We don’t want to give someone an advantage over someone else.”

“People call me all the time,” as well, he said, about business signs placed in illegal locations.

Otis T. Logue, a candidate for District 5 Parish councilman in the Oct. 20 election, said he has put up some of his campaign signs for display, but that “they’re being taken down as we speak,” Thursday afternoon. Logue is vice president of administration for Energy Services International in Houma.

“I didn’t know there was an ordinance (prohibiting his campaign signs),” Logue said. “I was shocked. I didn’t want to break the law.”

“I’m eager to run,” he said. “As you drive around the parish, you see signs for the council, and the legislature.”

Logue said his campaign signs were all placed on private property.

“The parish ordinance against signs on private property is against the Constitution,” he said. “What kind of law says you can’t put signs on private property?”

“I will abide by the law until it is changed,” he said.

Enforcing the no-signs ordinance “is not hard at all as long as someone reports it,” Schwab said.

The parish “Public Works Department will usually pick up the big signs,” he said.

Houma Police Department Lt. Todd Duplantis said, “We contact the Public Works Department about illegal signs. They send out letters of violation to the owners (of the signs).”

The parish ordinance allows 15 days for an illegal campaign sign on private property to be removed after “the owner of such sign” is notified. Failing that, “Terrebonne Parish Consolidated Government is authorized…to collect from the sign owner the cost of $100 for dismantling, removing, transporting and storing the sign.”

Also, the ordinance permits Terrebonne Parish to take away “without notice to sign owners” campaign signs located on public rights-of-way, and to “collect from the owners the cost of $100.”