Larry Langford, the politician who oversaw corruption-tainted bond deals that drove Alabama’s biggest county into a record-setting bankruptcy, has died less than two weeks after being released from federal prison in Kentucky because of declining health. He was 72.
Langford, who had been diagnosed with pulmonary disease and emphysema, died at a Birmingham hospital, the Birmingham News and local television networks reported.
Langford, a former television reporter who went on to become the president of the Jefferson County Commission and mayor of Birmingham, was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2010 for taking $241,000 in bribes in exchange for giving county sewer-bond and derivatives business to an investment-banker friend who earned $7.2 million in fees.
Jurors found that Langford solicited cash, loan payoffs, designer suits and a Rolex watch from William Blount, the former head of a Montgomery, Alabama-based securities firm, and Albert LaPierre, a consultant. In return, Langford, then president of the Jefferson County Commission, used his power to bring Blount into deals, including a $3 billion refinancing of the county’s sewer debt led by JPMorgan Chase & Co.
The sewer bond deals helped drive the 600,000-person county into what was then the biggest local-government bankruptcy in November 2011, when the havoc caused by the credit-market crash left it unable to cover its sewer debt payments and a state judge struck down a tax that generated almost 30% of the county’s revenue.
In 2009, JPMorgan agreed to a $722 million settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over payments that the agency said its bankers made to people tied to county politicians to win business. The bank also provided more than $900 million in concessions to allow the county to end its bankruptcy.
Langford was born in a public housing project in Birmingham and attended the University of Alabama at Birmingham after serving four years in the Air Force. After graduation, he worked as a television news reporter in Birmingham for almost 10 years and later in public relations at a local Budweiser distributor.
In 1986, Langford was elected mayor of Fairfield, a town of about 11,000 bordering Birmingham, and held that office for 14 years. As mayor, he championed the development of VisionLand, a bond-financed amusement park owned by 11 municipalities that filed bankruptcy in 2002. VisionLand included a brick bas-relief monument of Langford with his arms resting on the shoulders of two children.
Langford was elected to the Jefferson County Commission in 2002. After losing a re-election bid, he ran for mayor of Birmingham and was elected in November 2007. Distressed by a rising crime rate, in April 2008, Langford held a “sackcloth and ashes” prayer rally, drawing 1,000 people. The rally was inspired by the Book of Jonah, in which the dwellers of Nineveh wore sackcloth and ashes as a sign of turning away from sin.
Seven months later, Langford was arrested and charged with bribery and money laundering in connection with Jefferson County’s bond deals.
