Council asserting its independence…

Birmingham, Alabama power struggle leaves city without Washington lobbyist- al.com

How long until BMLL calls for it to be replaced by a new legislative body?

Anyway, Crazy Larry wants to hire two lobbying firms, one for Democrats and one for Republicans. The council wants to hire one firm, out of Atlanta, to lobby both parties. I should point out that there’s every chance that there will be no point in lobbying Republicans starting in January.

It’s the big sewer crisis story!

Jefferson County sewer debt crisis contained key players- al.com

I won’t summarize the six HTML pages of the News’ sewer crisis story, but I thought I would point out the man behind the problem:

Steve Sayler, Jefferson County’s finance director from 1989 until he retired in 2007. He recently was hired as Birmingham finance director under Mayor Larry Langford, his former boss at the county.

Or, as the secondary story has it:

Steve Sayler was chief defender of Jefferson County bond, swap deals- al.com

So BMLL thinks that Sayler did such a great job for the county that he was a terrific pickup for the city, huh?