I Love NY signs to come down by summer to avoid $14M fine
ALBANY - The blue I Love NY road signs that line highways across New York will soon come down, according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration.
Cuomo's top transportation officials announced Friday evening the state would soon remove the controversial highway signs, which have been at the center of a bitter, years-long feud between the federal government and the state over their safety and legality.
The announcement came a day after the Federal Highway Administration docked the state $14 million in highway funds for installing the signs and ignoring various warnings to remove them.
The FHWA gave the state until Sept. 30 to remove the signs and get its money back.
In a joint statement, state Acting Transportation Commissioner Paul Karas and Matthew Driscoll, acting executive director of the Thruway Authority, said they intend to remove the signs by summer and replace them with ones that have the federal administration's blessing.
They painted the move as the ending of an advertising campaign, which Cuomo himself had also alluded to last year.
"As the current campaign and signs are entering their fifth year, this message has run its useful course and we already plan to launch a new ‘I Love NY’ campaign this summer to support our tourism industry," Karas and Driscoll said. "The new campaign will be 'NY has it all!'"
New York spent $8.1 million installing 514 of the I Love NY signs throughout the state, using emergency contracts and paying overtime to make sure a large batch was up before the July 4 holiday in 2016.
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They are generally grouped in five, with a large blue-and-white "motherboard" followed rapidly by four separate signs touting the state's individual tourism programs, including "Taste NY" and "Path Through History."
The first batch of signs went up in 2014, six months after the FHWA issued an order prohibiting the state from putting them up.
The state and federal government battled over the signs for the next three-plus years, with the FHWA repeatedly warning New York could lose a portion of its highway funding if they weren't removed.
On Thursday, the federal administration followed through on its threat, withholding an estimated $14 million, or 1 percent of the state's share of two major federal funding programs.
FHWA contends the signs are potentially hazardous, contain too much information and convey no information that's of use to a driver while driving. The state had contended they were safe and legal.
The agency says the signs violate numerous federal highway rules governing what signage can and can't be placed along roadways. State law larger defers to the federal rules.
One violation, in particular, is the promotion of a web address and mobile application; The name of the state's I Love NY app and tourism website are printed on each sign. Other violations included prohibited images, fonts and colors.
A spokesman for the FHWA could not immediately be reached for comment Friday evening.
Karas and Driscoll touted the current signs as a success, claiming they encouraged motorists to get off the highway and visit "mom-and-pop restaurants, shops, and historic destinations."
"This increased traffic has in turn boosted local economies that aren’t typical tourist attractions," they said.
They said the state plans to reuse materials from the current signs to install the new signs.
The new signs will likely have to be approved by FHWA before they're erected if the state is to get the $14 million back.
"Existing materials will be reused but, as the signs will be redesigned for the new campaign, we will consult with FHWA during this process," Driscoll and Karas said in their statement.
On Monday, the state submitted an experimental proposal to the federal government, proposing to take down most of the I Love NY signs but erect similar signage at the borders of the state's economic regions.
The plan was rejected by the FHWA, which said it didn't include enough information. But the federal administration vowed to work with the state and getting the proposal up to par.
"The Federal Highway Administration intends to continue to work with NYSDOT to resolve this issue," FHWA spokesman Doug Hecox said in a statement Friday morning before the state said the signs would come down.
Karas and Driscoll vowed the work would be done before the September deadline for the state to get its money back.
"It will be a new campaign launched for the summer tourism cycle and as such must be concluded before the September FHWA deadline anyway," they said in the statement.