Another task force -- this one self-appointed -- composed of some of the city's elite has offered another proposal to save Pittsburgh from financial ruin. To no one's surprise, the findings of the Pittsburgh Financial Leadership Committee mirrored those of previous task forces (Competitive Pittsburgh, PGH 21, Governor's Task Force, etc.) in concluding that Pittsburgh does not have enough revenues to meet its obligations. As a result, this committee, like the others, recommends spending cuts and additional taxing authority for the city.

While we certainly applaud the call to cut expenditures through privatization and downsizing, we are concerned about giving increased taxing powers to an administration that has frittered away many opportunities to control the city's budget over the last dozen years. The mayor and City Council have ignored recommendations from previous commissions to cut expenditures, sell assets, impose a garbage fee and reduce the size of the public safety departments. Indeed, prior to the current crisis the mayor and the council balked at such proposals and instead chose to pass an unbalanced budget in hopes the state would bail them out. The state has its own problems and has turned the city's requests for new taxes down flat. Moreover, the state Legislature shows no inclination to change its well-reasoned position.

Blaming the 'burbs

Into this situation steps another elite group of Pittsburgh's apologists -- no matter how well intentioned -- that refuses to give up on getting more taxing authority. This group wants to place blame on suburbanites for not contributing more than the $10 annual occupational privilege tax and the array of nonprofit institutions for being exempt from the property tax. It is not willing to blame the city for failing to manage expenditures properly or placing high risk bets on grand revitalization schemes that have failed to generate growth and tax revenue. Nor does it recognize the $100 million or so that commuters and nonresidents pour into city coffers yearly through all the other taxes the city collects from them and the businesses they work for.

The Pittsburgh Financial Leadership Committee repeats the tired old rhetoric that "30 to 40 percent of the value of property in this city" is tax-exempt. It neglects to point out that the largest increase in exempt property value in the city over the last decade is a direct result of the mayor's rebuilding schemes. As reported by the Allegheny Institute in April, the mayor's Plan B projects account for the bulk of the increase in tax-exempt parcels in the city.

Cutting expenditures and selling assets is a step in the right direction. But will Pittsburgh continue with the spending cuts or restore them once it has more taxing power? The fact that it has taken a full-blown crisis to get any serious movement toward fiscal discipline raises doubts regarding the staying power of the newfound willingness to bite the bullet. For a dozen years the administration and City Council have gambled on "growing" the city out of its fiscal problems rather than facing them head on. The gamble has been lost and there is little in the way of jobs or tax revenues to show for all the tax money that has been spent on Plan B and other ventures, including Lord & Taylor and Lazarus.

It will take a couple of years -- at least -- of the city living within its means to demonstrate that a real commitment to fiscal discipline has replaced the previous Denial-and-Prognostication Syndrome.

Meanwhile, it is time for self-appointed city saviors to support the state Legislature in its efforts to create an oversight board with the power to move the city toward financial stability without new taxes. Holding out hopes that the Legislature might be lobbied into granting new taxes on businesses and suburbanites reduces the incentive for the city to take necessary actions to deal with its problems. It certainly does not encourage unions with "no-layoff" clauses to make any concessions.

It is clear that higher taxes are job killers. As such, they would give Pittsburgh only temporary relief. A deeper crisis will follow unless the city gets its spending in line with its size and unloads a lot of assets that it does not need to own.

Jake Haulk is president of the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy. Frank Gamrat is a senior research associate there.