Mississippi Speaker of the House Philip Gunn took the ice bucket challenge late last year, but it didn’t shake loose any logical reasons why he introduced legislation last month to require all 
communications towers in his state to be marked for aviation safety purposes if they were 50 feet high or taller, and were located outside of municipality boundaries.
As required in the Mississippi Code of 1972, along with other tower marking regulations, anemometer towers must be marked as follows: “The top one-third (1/3) of the anemometer tower shall be painted in equal, alternating bands of aviation orange and white, beginning with orange at the top of the tower and ending with orange at the bottom of the marked portion of the tower.”
The code was put in place to provide for greater aviation safety since pilots frequently complained about their inability to see thin-faced meteorological towers.
However, Gunn wanted all towers to conform to anemometer regulations, even if they had a combined girth as round as Sally Struthers, Chris Christie and Aretha Franklin in a communal embrace, seemingly visible from space, and he introduced a revision that added “telecommunications tower or telecommunications antenna” to the amendment.
He also threw in a retroactive clause that required all communications towers to be marked within one year that were constructed prior to the bill’s effective date of July 1, 2015.
The hasty legislation didn’t address monopalms which in compliance would have painted green fronds that would appear to be advertisements for Sbarro’s pizza restaurants.
Fortunately for the industry, Gunn’s bill died in committee yesterday.
