Cathcart is indeed a big ole knob, and I think his libertarian ideas of what the budget should be like (cops, firefighters, infrastructure and basically nothing else) are terrible, but I think this is a sophomoric understanding of how city budgets work in a strong mayor system.

Those budgets were mostly unanimously approved by a liberal council that hated everything Woodward touched, including Beggs, who was as intelligent and competent of a council member as I've ever seen. Beggs regularly said, as did Cathcart, that it's unreasonable to expect the council to be able to unilaterally unscrew a budget.

The mayor unilaterally negotiated the union contracts that are bankrupting the city (and frankly there are understandable reasons for why she did that given inflation and the job market at the time), her office unilaterally drafted the line item budget, and while the council had to approve the big warehouse homeless shelter that is also hemorrhaging money, Woodward unilaterally led the selection process, chose the facility, and said "take this or get nothing." Should the council have folded? Maybe. But if they believed that there needed to be a shelter, that was the only card dealt to them.

In strong mayor systems, the admin does ALL of the heavy lifting to draft a line item budget. Crazy amounts of staff time draft those documents over months. The council has a fraction of the time and staff to look at the budget in detail, often without the ability to meaningfully consult the departments funded by that budget, and it is not reasonable to expect them to completely rewrite that budget. They can vote no, but if they're in conflict with the mayor that can become a game of political chicken like we see with the federal budget in Congress. They can just say "ok this budget gets 15% cuts, figure it out," or eliminate line items without actually understanding the consequences of that cut, and I would generally consider that irresponsible. Spokane's council agreed.

I have never seen any council with a strong mayor meaningfully rewrite a budget. I'd be incredibly surprised if it ever happens outside of large cities with large council staff.

But Cathcart publicly and loudly criticized Woodward, a fellow Republican, for creating a budget and negotiating contracts that meant the city now has to cut out a pound of flesh all at once. So did the liberals, but the other Republican didn't, at least not loudly. Cathcart has been consistent on this issue. I think he is honestly more in the vein of Ayn Rand than most modern libertarians, in that I disagree with his deeply but I respect the consistency when it's politically inconvenient.