Thanks, GB. It seems like they had a scheme that depended on good times and good revenue. That dependency failed, and the "house of cards collapsed". Yes, anything that results in firing 2/3 of a county work force is symptomatic of wildly irresponsible decision making, and the people who made those decisions should be considered at fault.
It's kind of hard to believe, though. Birmingham is a really big metro area? What is it, about a million people?