The oversight committee is mulling a demotion of Pittsburgh to a state of permanent supervision by Allegheny County. The political party chosen decade after decade by the voters to run the city was only able to run it into the ground. According to proponents of the idea — which would treat Pittsburgh as a separate entity with regard to taxes and debt — the city’s ruling class was and is impossibly incontinent. Money was no object because reality was no concern. The political resistance could be titanic, a word befitting Pittsburgh’s sinking condition. Suburbanites — racists, in the opinion of Mayor Tom Murphy — might have to approve the consolidation, as might the voters of Pittsburgh. Any enabling legislation must contain ironclad protections; if this is seen as a bailout by county taxpayers, we wouldn’t give a nickel for its chances. We would give a nickel for the efficiencies — perhaps in the tens of millions of dollars — in consolidation of government operations. Is a corner turned• As city officials argued that Pittsburgh is the keystone of the region and must be saved, lawmakers and taxpayers cringed at the prospect of providing resources to the governing elite so obviously in over its head. For the sake of this argument, let us accept the paradigm: As goes Pittsburgh, so goes the region. On that premise, Pittsburgh is too important — and too ill — to be left in the embrace of Typhoid Murphy, who made it sick.

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