RALEIGH – Because there are only so many hours in the day, and so much revenue governments can collect before taxpayers revolt, public officials are compelled to set priorities with the resources at their disposal. You can judge whether those priorities make sense by examining the lowest-ranking government tasks to see how much attention they receive and whether they are accomplishing anything of value.
In Asheville, the priorities are way out of whack. Case in point: the machinations of the city’s sign police.
The Octopus Garden, a shop purveying all manner of accoutrements for the discriminating pipe smoker, owns a truck. Its owners use the vehicle to transport merchandise. When not in use, the truck, featuring the store’s logo, sits in the parking lot of The Octopus Garden, though not necessarily in the shade.
Some busybody reported this “violation” of Asheville’s sign ordinance to city officials, who in turn have investigated to see if the Octopus Garden truck is really a means of transportation or an advertisement. The Asheville Citizen Times quoted the city’s assistant planning director as saying that there were questions about whether the truck actually moved. “There was one time period that it had a flat tire and certainly was not operable,” she told the newspaper.
Oh? So someone from the city has been out to inspect the sufficiency of truck’s tire inflation? (Feel free to inject a gratuitous Barack Obama joke if you wish. I’m just too pumped up about abuses of sign regulation here and don’t feel driven to change the subject.)
More often than not, reports of illegal signage are reported to city officials by competing businesses. They want their competition’s advertising squelched. The phenomenon isn’t limited to Asheville. All across North Carolina, I’ve seen and heard of cases where parked vehicles, yard signs, and costumed employees have been reported to government officials by business competitors as “illegal signs.” Even when the complaints are ultimately dismissed, they eat up lots of time and, in some cases, legal fees. Sometimes the complaints are upheld, in which case annoyance becomes injustice.
It’s not exactly sporting for competing stores to make sign complaints, admittedly, but the root of the problem is the existence of sign ordinances that go far beyond any legitimate public interest in keeping public rights-of-way open or keeping motorists from being dangerously distracted. Sign and billboard companies are the frequent target of attack by newspaper editorialists – pardon me if I’m cynical about the motives involved. And more generally, sign ordinances reflect a widespread hostility to advertising that is based on widespread misunderstanding about its economic function in conveying valuable information and how it benefits consumers by fostering competition, reducing prices and search costs, and increasing the quality of goods and services.
Every minute that a city official wastes measuring the size of a commercial billboard or checking the tire inflation of a commercial vehicle is a minute that can’t be used delivering legitimate public services such as law enforcement, public health and safety, or traffic mitigation. Of government’s inability to set reasonable priorities, it is an unmistakable sign.
What’s the proper city treatment of commercial advertising? I think Ringo sang it best in the next-to-last line:
“We would be so happy you and me/No one there to tell us what to do.”
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.