Buncombe County officials removed newspaper stands from the sidewalk in front of the courthouse. The stands have been on the public property for years. What’s more, the county and the City of Asheville own the stretch of sidewalk in question. City officials were not consulted.

County Manager Wanda Greene ordered the move late last month. “We removed them because they were just becoming quite unsightly,” Greene explains. “There were so many of them, and everyone who had a box there was contacted to pick their boxes up.”

Newspapers affected by the beautification aren’t so sure the part about them being contacted is true.

This only adds to the stack of black hats the county is wearing these days. Whereas the city and county have been staggering their Tuesday meetings, July’s meetings have been scheduled simultaneously. That makes life difficult for watchdogs and little newspapers without enough reporters to go around. At least one aficionado swears the county sits the local daily down and tells them what to write. The only substantial item on the commissioners’ agendas at the two meetings, held just after the news stand cleanup, pertained to the county’s middleman purchase of the old Volvo plant for Linamar.

On a funny note, it has not yet been established whether or not the Citizen-Times box was allowed to remain. All the indy news guys are at their day jobs, so nobody can bust loose for a quick driveby.

A few years ago, Brian Sarzynski of the Mountain Xpress held a powwow of indy reporters following a city council meeting. It was uncomfortable having to ostracize the girl who worked for the Citizen-Times. He shared a rumor about a plot to replace unsightly masses of scraggly newspaper stands with beautiful Gannett (publisher of USA Today and the Citizen-Times) kiosks. It seemed the indy papers would either have to deliver door to door or pay Gannett for space. The kiosks did appear at a few gas stations, but they weren’t viewed as too much of a problem. That was the conversation wherein Sarzynski told of some skateboarders setting fire to one of their stands and throwing it off a parking deck.

Needless to say, an attorney consulted by the Mountain Xpress says the unilateral suppression of free speech by the county is not Constitutional.