The language Bennett inserted in the emergency aid bill is rightly causing consternation among state and local governments in some Gulf Coast states that have passed laws to prohibit new billboards from being erected to replace damaged or destroyed signs. Bennett's office says the provision only allows the rebuilding of signs near federal highways, but local officials are not sure that this federal legislation won't trump local billboard restrictions elsewhere. Neither are we.

To protect the right of local communities to get rid of garish billboards they don't want, the language should be reworded to make it clear that only signs along federal highways would be protected. If that is truly Bennett's intent, he shouldn't object to a clarification to ease the concerns of locals. If his intent is to override local ordinances, the language should be removed.

It's obvious why Bennett would push such a misguided and intrusive provision into a bill providing desperately needed aid for the states hit by Hurricane Katrina: The senator has received thousands of dollars in campaign donations from sign companies, including Salt Lake City-based Young Electric Sign Co., which has offices in Gulfport, Miss.; the Outdoor Advertising Association of America; and Lamar Advertising, one of the Gulf Coast's largest billboard companies.

The companies fear that rebuilding of the Gulf Coast will mean fewer billboards, and that may be true. If communities were working, pre-Katrina, to restrict new billboards and get rid of old ones, the upshot of the storm may have been to jump-start that process.

But the billboard debate is better left to local governments, which don't need, and shouldn't tolerate, Bennett's butting in. Surely, with the country at war, the deficit at an all-time high and millions of Americans living without health insurance, Bennett shouldn't be taking his eyes off the road to gaze at billboards.