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Friday, January 17, 2003 Your ad on this government vehicleNEWS-JOURNAL EDITORIAL Two summers ago, a New York couple held an Internet auction. The product was their newborn son's name. They were willing to give a corporation the right to name the child for a fee of $500,000 or up. That was not the surprise – not when advertisers have abducted the marquees of sports arenas, the flanks of school buses, that once blessedly blank space in front of urinals, beach sand, every piece of peelable fruit and even dead people (remember Fred Astair selling Dirt Devil vacuum cleaners?) to hawk their products. The surprise was that no one stepped forward to buy the little guy's name. His parents called him Zane. But advertisers' co-opting of public spaces, or at least public vistas, barges on, with sometimes disturbing implications. The latest such example is the New Smyrna Beach Police Department's decision to use a vehicle essentially donated by a local dealership (for $1 a month) in exchange for the dealership's right to plaster its name on the car. The Edgewater Police Department is doing the same thing with a sport utility vehicle from another dealership, also for $1 a month. With Baywatch-type product placement for inspiration, the Volusia County Beach Patrol has been using T-shirts, bathing suits and other products emblazoned with their supplier's logo for four years. It's not yet a prevalent trend. It is at that uncertain stage half-way between the experimental and the controversial. But it is happening often enough that one company specializes in linking public agencies with corporate sponsors, unashamedly showing police cars, ambulances and fire engines with the once-ironic "YOUR LOGO HERE" imprinted on hoods, trunks, doors, roofs and wherever else a vehicle's body meets a line of sight. Controversial is too weak a word for the trend. Ill-conceived, unethical, unprincipled is more like it, not to mention visually unappealing. The sponsors should be exempt from criticism. Car dealerships are in business to make money and advertise any way they can, wherever they can for a good price. They'll take what's offered, and advertising creativity is no sin. But public agencies, especially those in charge of public safety, are not a business. They're a taxpayer trust, entrusted to do their work impartially. Letting an advertiser plaster messages on police cars or fire engines creates a lousy perception in the public's eye. Even if it isn't actually the case, it gives the appearance of a police force bought by a business. And all good intentions aside, the perception that favoritism will come in play is inevitable. Local officials who've been seduced by the trend make a good case. They're strapped for cash. It's a "partnership" that provides a two-way service. It's done in the open. They would never play favorites. But each of these are excuses that only underscore the problem -- defensive attempts to diffuse the obvious nag-bomb: Choosing a sponsor is itself playing favorites. And if the agencies are strapped for cash, why not make the case to taxpayers rather than advertisers? The answer, of course, raises the most disturbing aspect of this new trend. It suggests that government these days doesn't need to be funded through the normal mechanisms. The mechanism itself can be privatized away from the will of the taxpayer by appealing, one-on-one, to a couple of businesses with agendas of their own. Those aren't partnerships. Those aren't services to taxpayers. They're end-runs around taxpayers and publicly funded budgets. And more loudly than the advertising messages billboarding public property, they blare one overriding message: Government is for sale. |
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