In Houston, at least 12,000 so-called off-premises billboards loomed by 1980, when the city at last took decisive action to limit the visual mayhem, banning permits for nearly all new billboards and imposing tight restrictions on existing structures.

Then-Mayor Jim McConn called the ordinance a way to “get rid of some of the slop that mars the views on numerous streets.”

The new rules survived years of court battles, debates in the Texas Legislature and periodic efforts at City Hall to revise, rescind or otherwise weaken them. Today, about 1,000 of the advertising platforms still stand.

All of that could change once more, if an idea floating around Mayor Sylvester Turner’s administration since last fall comes to fruition. In November, the city invited proposals to build and operate dozens of giant new double-facing digital billboards on city-owned right of way. Ads would rotate every eight seconds.

Environmentalists are understandably alarmed. Opponents with Scenic Houston told the editorial board recently that the proposal is a potential death knell for the city’s decades-old moratorium. Lawyers for the group argue that relaxing the rules for some signs would invite equal-protection claims from rival firms, threatening to permit a wave of new construction.

“We’ve eliminated so many billboards,” Scenic Houston board member emeritus Jonathan Day said. “Houston is well on our way to restoring some of the opportunity for introducing our guests to a much more beautiful city.”

This editorial board reached out twice to Turner’s administration to discuss the proposal. “I am told there is nothing to share at this time,” Turner’s spokeswoman Mary Benton responded. “The City is still evaluating to determine the best path forward.”

That tight-lipped approach is worrisome from a mayor who has long championed Houston’s quality of life. Turner surely knows how explosive the idea of upending the city’s billboard protections would be. He knows this issue ought to be debated in the full glare of public scrutiny. It’s reasonable to work out some details in private —

the outdoor advertising industry is outrageously litigious — but refusing to discuss even basic components of the plan is unacceptable.

In a previous, unsuccessful campaign for mayor in 2003, Turner vowed to support the city’s billboard restrictions, calling an update a decade earlier a reasonable compromise, “consistent with the aim of beautifying Houston.”

Three years later, Houston went to federal court to stop sign company RTM, which had erected 59 giant new billboards in a five-mile zone just outside of city limits. In 2010, a federal judge ordered RTM to remove the signs and pay $50,000 to the city. In 2007, Clear Channel ended a 20-year court battle to resist the city’s mandates, agreeing to fast-forward the removal of two-thirds of its roughly 1,300 small and medium-sized signs in the city.

Houston has fought long and hard to clear our skies of distracting visual pollution and we’re wary of any plan to reverse course now, even if industry is promising sweet financial incentives to a city plagued by a vexing structural deficit.

Based on the request for proposals, the city is looking for at least $10 million in an upfront payment and at least $2 million per year in revenue-sharing. For every new digital billboard, three older, existing static billboard structures would have to be removed.

There may be some legitimate debate over whether those benefits outweigh the risk to the city’s decades-old moratorium on new billboards. But the arguments do face strong headwinds.

For starters, the minimum deal hardly seems competitive. With a current operating budget of $5.1 billion, $10 million upfront plus $2 million a year is no windfall. In the few places where similar deals have been struck, cities have demanded much more revenue. They have also required a much more aggressive ratio of old signs being removed for each new sign erected.

In Chicago, City Council debated for over a year a proposal by then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel to allow up to 60 new digital billboards. Approved in 2012, Chicago was promised $15 million in the first year, and at least $155 million over 20 years.

But a series of snarls slowed the signs’ installation. By 2019 only $22 million of the guaranteed payments had been made. An amended deal spreads those payments out and reduces the number of signs.

It’s understandable that Turner was searching for new revenue last year, after the pandemic left the city’s fiscal forecasts a fright. A year later, though, federal aid has come to temporary rescue.

Bottom line: any proposal to renegotiate Houston’s strong historic stand against billboard blight needs a public debate.. Turner owes the City Council and the public straight answers on where the proposal stands, what the response has been from industry, and when and if he plans to bring the matter to a vote — and why.

There is no such thing as an ad blocker for the bright billboards that accost us on daily commutes or leisurely bike rides. For more than 40 years, the next best thing has been Houston’s no-nonsense billboard restrictions. Weakening them could be a sign of trouble — one that Houstonians can’t fully assess if they remain in the dark.