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| City employee removing campaign signs from right of way on Market St. in Greensboro. |
For the third time in a week, WGHP has a politically oriented story in which they fabricate the central premise. This time the headline is:
Theft of Political Signs Increase in Greensboro
The proof of this theft? Nothing. So they just make something up.
The story tells of campaign volunteers "pulling out all the stops..."
"In some cases, that includes pulling up the opponent's campaign signs."
What cases? They don't say. Whose volunteers? They don't say. WGHP makes it up--fabricates it and puts it out there with no substantiation. They get some people to say that signs have gone missing and jump to the unsubstantiated conclusion that "volunteers" are "in some cases" "pulling up the opponent's" signs. No particular volunteer; no particular cases, just a little waltz through the land of make-believe.
Not until the very end of the story does Fox8 hint at another explanation for the disappearance of campaign signs, although they don't bother to flesh it out: If a sign is not on private property with the owners' permission, "it will be removed," by Greensboro officials they report; and contrary to WGHP's erroneous implication, it is not against the law to "steal" a sign that is on public property. Anyone may remove an illegally placed sign. That's not stealing. It's beautification -- and it's legal.
I have no doubt that people steal legally placed campaign signs, but this steaming pile from WGHP is not a report of sign stealing. It is a work of fiction that, like their other concoctions this week, substitutes fantasy for reality..
The fact is, there was an explosion of illegally placed signs over the past weekend. It did not take this blogger long, in photographing them, to run across a Greensboro City employee removing signs from street right of ways (pic above). Unlike WGHP's schlock, this is documented. This you can see for yourself. If WGHP were more interested in reporting news than faking it, they might have looked into the possibility that the "stolen" signs were illegally placed and rightfully removed
Roch, the picture you posted shows signs that were placed, in a residential yard, with the owner's permission, just not 10 feet back from the curb (which isn't always possible due to fencing). I believe the primary reason City Staff was cleaning up W Market Street was due to the fact of the overwhelming number of sings in the median by one particular candidate.
ReplyDeleteNancy Vaughan
Nancy, thanks for commenting. The city employee was an equal opportunity sign remover; I just happened to catch this shot, but I watched her remove a number of signs for a variety of candidates. The signs in the picture were indeed in front of someone's house, too close to the curb, but not in the median. Both may be improper, but I see a difference in intent between a resident putting signs on his property too close to the curb and a campaign worker blanketing the public areas of a neighborhood with signs.
ReplyDeleteJust like you can have your car towed from the right of way but you can get it back, it is legal to remove the signs from the right of way, but it is actually illegal to destroy them without giving the owner (political campaign) a reasonable chance to retrieve them. At the end of each campaign, the city has a huge pile of signs that they hold for the campaigns to pick up, which they usually don't.
ReplyDelete"but it is actually illegal to destroy them without giving the owner (political campaign) a reasonable chance to retrieve them"
ReplyDeleteI can find nothing in the ordinance pertaining to political signs that requires that and I think you are wrong.
Roch, is it possible that you have a little too much free time?
ReplyDeleteRoch the law is pretty clear on this and your statement is not correct.
ReplyDeleteIf I may address this issue, it is not illegal to remove the signs if they are on your private property or on the right of way. It is as someone stated above illegal to remove them in a wholesale fashion from private property and throw them away.
Similar to the example given of a car broken down on the side of the road, I would argue that common law property rights that aren't necessarily codified into every single law say that you have to give the owner of the property a chance to recover their property before it is considered abandoned.
The NC DOT practice for election signs that are placed in the ROW, is that "such signs are taken to local maintenance offices for storage until they are claimed." In other words, the NC DOT recognizes those property rights.
Call the City of Greensboro and see what they do with the signs. They hold onto them because it would be illegal to throw them away unless they hold them for some reasonable time to be claimed. Under due process, you can't just "take" property without giving the property owner a chance to initiate the procedure to recover it.
What statement of mine is not correct? I said that "Anyone may remove an illegally placed sign" and you are arguing that I said anybody may removed a legally placed sign. That's not what I said.
ReplyDeleteBut I did take your advice and call the city. They told me that if signs are illegally placed in public places, the public may remove them.
Anon is partly correct. The signs must be held for a period of time for claim but before they can be claimed the owner must pay for storage and retrieval at a cost that will often be more than the signs are worth.
ReplyDeleteThen, if not claimed, the signs (or cars or whatever) are sold at auction as scrap.