News

LIGHTNING EDITORIAL: Advisers plunge into another snipe hunt

By Bill Moss, Published: February 18, 2015

The Business Advisory Committee appointed by the Hendersonville City Council is following the same tail-chasing pattern of its county predecessor, which spent nine months searching for evidence of regulatory zeal and begging for testimony on anti-business bias only to conclude that Henderson County was already business friendly.

The county's advisory panel wound up recommending that the Board of Commissioners allow bigger signs for produce stands and legalize booze in the Historic Courthouse. Commissioners declined to enact the latter.

Last month, the city's Business Advisory Committee dutifully showed up and listened politely as City Manager John Connet walked them through a Powerpoint show about the city's new customer service policies that have made the city — surprise! —business friendly. No mention of the pro-business development "concierge" that City Council members have been suggesting.
We don't recall hearing about this great need for red-carpet regulators when a 40-foot retaining wall at the Asheville Regional Airport collapsed on Christmas Eve. Failure of the wall, erected by a contractor who had neglected to pull a permit from the Buncombe County Inspections Department, threatened the A retaining wall at Asheville Regional Airport failed on Christmas Eve of 2014.production lifeline of the Sierra Nevada brewery and caused sediment pollution in the French Broad River. We know that because the supposedly overzealous regulators from the state cited the contractor for the damage. The episode would seem to be a recent example of the reason the government performs functions like the evaluation of engineering plans, inspections and oversight — and don't get us started about whether Henderson County, the state of North Carolina and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers should liberate characters like Keith Vinson from the shackles of environmental regulation and the rules of accountability.

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What has the Hendersonville Business Advisory Committee achieved? For one thing, it has forced the city to adopt the aforementioned customer service plan. Called "The Playbook," the spiral-bound guide contains the usual boilerplate of clichés about serving taxpayers and a series of quotes from the likes of Vince Lombardi, Henry Ford, Babe Ruth and Bill Gates ("Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.")
Other than a free turkey sandwich, it's hard to see what these otherwise busy and presumably productive business advisers themselves get for their hour-long investment of time. Last month, in a desperate search for something to gripe about, the advisers asked what the city was going to do about the new Asheville outlet mall, supposedly a threat on the occupied west bank of the French Broad River. What nonsense. The outlet stores more likely will increase the herd of tourists looking for a place to eat and a less plastic environment to visit —a quaint small town with historic buildings and painted bears comes to mind. The Asheville Outlets are as much a threat to Hendersonville as the Biltmore House or Sierra Nevada brewery. More people in the region means more people discovering Hendersonville means more people staying here, spending here and moving here.

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We're always queasy when elected officials cede to an advisory board the business of governing. If the City Council wants to repeal the city's zoning ordinance, scrap sign regulations and ease landscape requirements, it should do so. We already have the most business friendly and in many ways visionary council we have had in decades. It has acted sensibly on regulatory matters large and small — without the need for recommendations from an unelected committee. Council members don't need business advisers; they are the business advisers.
The more we observe the city Business Advisory Committee, the more it seems to be a model of what small-government conservatives deplore. It has no clearly visible purpose and no record of achieving anything. And yet through inertia it lives on, wasting staff time and taxpayers' money on reports, flailing away at phantom threats and forcing workaday planners to look over their shoulder.
Here's an idea. If the business advisory panel wants to strike a blow for government efficiency, it ought to go out of business.