The Birmingham City Council approved Mayor Randall Woodfin’s proposed budget for the 2024 fiscal year last week. It was the culmination of the city’s most contentious budgeting process in years. Since Woodfin took office in 2017, almost all of his budgets have passed without any alterations from the council, thanks mostly to state legislation from 2016 that took away their ability to do so.

The Mayor-Council Act is the state law governing the separation of powers between the branches of Birmingham’s municipal government, but some argue that changes to the bill approved the year before Woodfin took office have shifted that balance of power too heavily toward the executive. Read more.