State and Regional News

BIRMINGHAM — Mayor Larry Langford strode into a recent meeting with business leaders accompanied by two police officers carrying submachine guns. They looked ready for trouble.

The cops were props, though, meant to hype Langford's "top secret" finance plans for Birmingham, an old steel city-turned-medical hub that's trying to cope with population losses and a bad reputation for crime.

The stunt drew headlines, but not as big as the ones a few days earlier when Langford announced a bid to bring the 2020 Olympics to Birmingham. Many just laughed. While some said an Olympics bid could help breathe new life into Alabama's largest city, others said it would be a misguided financial drain for a town struggling just to pave streets.

Critics say Langford is out there — they call him "Mayor LaLa" — yet Langford makes no apologies. He says he's just living up to his campaign slogan from last year: "Let's do something!"

Almost immediately after winning office last year, Langford began unveiling a series of ideas that arrived rapid-fire, seemingly in no particular order.

Neighborhood cleanups in a poor, mostly black city of 217,000. Free college scholarships for students in a system that has closed schools amid shrinking enrollment.

A trolley system. A domed stadium. A Pentagon-shaped building for city services. Establishing a civil rights trail with double-decker buses for tourists.

Langford, 60, has a rapid-fire cadence and darting eyes. Silvery hair and a mustache frame a youthful face.

A former promoter and television reporter, he moves quickly from idea to idea as skeptics point out how his brainstorming would cost hundreds of millions of dollars that City Council members often say they don't have.

He also is fending off a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit over alleged financial wrongdoing, and Langford has said he wouldn't be surprised to be indicted in a separate Justice Department investigation.

Langford is a sharp departure from predecessor Bernard Kincaid, who was known more as a caretaker than an innovator, an administrator who created few waves or eye-popping headlines.

"He's totally different than any other mayor of Birmingham I've ever seen," said William Stewart, a retired political scientist at the University of Alabama.

Langford was elected to the Birmingham City Council in 1977 after serving in the Air Force and working as one of the city's first black television reporters. He lost a race for mayor and moved to neighboring Fairfield, where he won the mayor's office in 1988 and worked as a promoter for a Budweiser beer distributor.

Langford was virtually unknown outside the metro area until 1995, when he came up with the idea for a taxpayer-backed amusement park called VisionLand that was backed by a consortium of cities.

The $60 million park failed spectacularly: It went bankrupt, was sold to a private company for about $5 million in 2002, and now operates under another name. Langford just aimed higher, winning the first of two terms on the Jefferson County Commission the same year.

Last year, with the county on the eve of a huge debt crisis that now has it teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, Langford ditched his commission job and ran for mayor. He won, defeating nine opponents without a runoff.

He often adds a dramatic touch to his initiatives. A Christian who organized prayer rallies to fight crime, he donned a burlap sack and put ashes on his head in a biblical sign of repentance.

But nothing beat Langford's plan to bid for the 2020 Olympics, an idea that left many slack-jawed, not least because Birmingham is a mid-sized city that can't even attract a big-league sports team.

A man who opposed Langford's plan for the Visionland amusement park in the '90s and questions his Olympics bid said the mayor is too quick to act on impulse and emotion.

"I wouldn't let him handle my money," said Charles H. Kemp Jr. "He's a good promoter, but you have to act on facts."

Some praise Langford for at least trying in a city that lives in the shadows of Atlanta and Nashville, Tenn.

"He's doing a great job. He's willing to do the things to put together a plan to move this city forward," the Rev. Artis Murphy said outside a City Council meeting.