Comments At Arlington County Board Meeting, March 14, 2026.
As a regular County Board candidate, my concerns about abuse of Arlington’s sign ordinance are longstanding. I’ve made a ritual of providing County Board with an annual political yard sign report detailing those abuses.
My reports deplore the routine confiscation of non-Democrat signs both from the medians and the polls by ACDC operatives, as well as their routine violation of the 2-sign per candidate per median rule. This past year’s gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger raised Democrat intransigence to a new level by featuring her name on both her signs and those of her running mate. This provided Spanberger with an unfair electoral advantage over her GOP opponent Winsome Sears, who is also a female person of color.
Another abuse approved by County Board itself in 2021 was pegging the start of the 31-day period for posting signs at 31 days before the start of early voting instead of Election Day. I commented then that I was “concerned about this unilateral decision insofar as the Zoning Ordinance, §13.11.2.E.1 expressly limits sign placement to ‘Up to 31 consecutive days before an election or party nominating caucus.’
“There is no dispensation for early voting. There is no authorization to extend the public spectacle of signs covering every inch of the medians on most of the major roads in the County to two months or more. . . legislating by fiat is not the preferred way to change the sign ordinance.”
ZOCO has proposed banning political signs in the medians outright. In advocating for this draconian solution, staff points to a survey in which a solid majority “indicated they are not at all comfortable with median signs (Staff report, p. 10).” Yet because the survey was not randomized, it is not representative and may have been skewed by special interests.
Staff also points to the fact that “crashes occur twice the rate in Equity Emphasis Areas – locations that closely align with areas with a high concentration of vulnerable populations (Staff report, p. 8)” to insist upon an outright sign ban. Implicit in this recommendation is the notion that vulnerable populations are more easily distracted than others, which is as patronizing as overt racism.
Absent objective data to prove the need for an outright sign ban, I recommend the following policy to end the current abuse:
- Peg the 31-day rule to the actual date of an election;
- Stop selective enforcement of the sign ordinance; and
- Limit signage to Arlington’s primary roads.