It’s time to (get taken for a) ride!

It was standing room only last week at Mayor Larry Langford’s first State of the City address. Each year the Kiwanis Club hosts the event at the Harbert Center, but this year’s speech promised something exciting. Not only was Leapin’ Larry making his debut, but, post-hip surgery, he was possibly on painkillers to boot.

There was no telling what that self-professed crazy man might say, and the lure of uncertainty had packed the place. The Harbert Center management set up more and more tables in the capacious but crowded hall until there was nowhere else to squeeze another seat.

“I’m sorry, but we have to ask you to move,” the Harbert manager said to us at the media table. She expropriated our seats, and the Fourth Estate was pushed against the walls or into the atrium, where I wound up sitting on a comfortable couch and listening to Langford’s speech through the building’s ubiquitous loudspeakers. Sitting across a coffee table from me was another person used to being left outside of things — David Hill, the executive director of the Birmingham Jefferson Transit Authority.

Inside the hall, the mayor’s office played a short video highlighting the new administration’s accomplishments (often taking credit for things not yet accomplished). Chief of Staff Deborah Vance narrated the video. She spoke about giving laptops and scholarships to Birmingham students, building a domed
stadium and allocating $9 million for improvements in mass transit.

That last line jolted my attention. Even before the city council passed Mayor Langford’s tax hike, I had been trying to pin that figure down. Numbers in this administration are moving targets.

When Langford first proposed a hike in the business license fee, he told the city council that the increase would raise $36 million in new money. Of that, $19 million per year would pay for a domed stadium and $17 million would fund overdue improvements in mass transit. The councilors were all but elated.

But something was wrong in the numbers. The administration hadn’t accounted for a state statute that prevented them from hiking the license fees of insurance companies. As a result, there was only $26 million in new money. Quietly and almost beyond the council’s notice, the administration adjusted the numbers in the ordinance. The domed stadium would still get $19 million, but transit was reduced to $9 million per year in new money.

Only Councilor Valerie Abbott seemed to notice or care. As Langford ramrodded the ordinance through the council, Abbott asked the mayor about the differing numbers. Langford said that the $9 million number was a mistake and he asked the city clerk to write the $17 million figure back into the ordinance.

A few weeks later, the administration submitted several amendments to the Economic and Community Revitalization Ordinance. One of those amendments changed the new transit funding from $17 million back to $9 million. This time, no one on the council made a sound.

After one council meeting, I asked Langford about the changing numbers. He talked a lot, but he couldn’t give a straight answer. According to Langford, the tax increase would provide $9 million, because the insurance companies pay only $8 million a year, which could not be doubled. So the city, he said, would take that $8 million from the insurance companies, add it to the $9 million from the license fee increase, and voila — $17 million a year in new money.

Only, $8 million of it isn’t new. It’s the same old revenue that’s being spent on something else, right? But once print media began asking questions, Langford quickly escaped to his office.

So at the Harbert Center, when I heard the chief of staff’s video say there would be $9 million of new money for transit, I wondered whether the administration had blundered into the truth.

If they had, then it didn’t seem to bother the transit director. When that number came across the atrium speakers, Hill was undeterred from his lunch.
The video concluded and Langford hobbled to the podium. There were few big announcements in the State of the City address: Birmingham would put 50 more cops on the streets, Langford said, and Bo Jackson was coming to Birmingham to invest in a grocery store. The rest was Leapin’ Larry boilerplate. Who needs facts or firm figures? If it’s numbers you want, then Bo knows low prices. That’s all the public needs to know and that’s all that the dutiful TV media reported later that evening.

But before he was done, Langford let one real number slip: $9 million in new funding for mass transit. This time it was from his own mouth.

And still, the transit director ate at his lunch. If that was less money than Hill expected, it didn’t bother his appetite.

What’s troublesome about this is that Hill has indicated in board meetings, in other media and in PowerPoint presentations that the BJCTA will receive $17 million in new money from the City of Birmingham. And Hill has big plans for that money. He wants the BJCTA to replace its entire fleet of buses. He wants to build a streetcar system downtown with vintage trolleys. He wants to finish the decade-old plan for a true inter-modal facility on Morris Avenue.

And keeping with Langford’s style of leadership, Hill has made it clear that anyone who isn’t on board will be thrown overboard. These things can be done and will be done immediately, he has said — with the $17 million in new funding from the city.

After Langford’s speech, as the retreating crowd bottlenecked at the escalator, I asked Hill the same questions.

Is it $17 million or $9 million?

It is $17 million, he said.

Where is the other $8 million coming from?

According to Hill, Langford told him that the city would take the $8 million from things that will receive new funding from the increase in sales taxes. If Hill is truthful and Langford was truthful with him, that means the city plans to cut things like police and fire protection, education, infrastructure improvements or economic development.

In the end, the BJCTA might or might not get all that money. Either way, someone is being taken for a ride.

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