ECONOMY FORCES COUNCIL MEMBERS TO GIVE MAYOR TINY BIRTHDAY CAKE

The City of Columbia’s unnecessarily liberal mayor got an unnecessarily conservative birthday cake this week. And by “conservative” I mean really, really tiny.

Bob Coble turned 56 on Monday, and The State’s Adam Beam blogged that the “economy shrank” the birthday cake given to him by City Council members.

“Councilman Daniel Rickenmann wanted it noted for the record that council members got the mayor an appropriately sized cake, given the current economic circumstances,” Beam wrote.

That “appropriate size” was less than a foot in circumference — or just big enough to mush the words “Happy Birthday” in frosting.

Oddly enough, this is the first time Coble and company have been in any way frugal with money, so I’m assuming they funded the cake out of pocket.

Had taxpayer’s been footing the bill — like with the $3,000 “team-building” retreat or the $10,000 drag queen performance — I bet the cake would have been 25 layers tall and coated with diamond icing.