politics@roanoke.com / Preston Bryant

Preston Bryant is a Republican who has represented Lynchburg and part of Amherst County in the Virginia House of Delgates since 1996.

PITTSBURGH --State and local governments go head-to-head, no matter where you are. It’s true in Virginia, and it’s true in Pennsylvania. Elsewhere, for sure.

Virginia has seen the relationship between Richmond and her cities, towns, and counties deteriorate for decades, but it’s an estrangement that’s accelerated over the past handful of years. At the root of it all is money.

The state treasury takes in a lot of money that in turn is supposed to be sent to local governments to support such basic services as schools, public safety, and transportation. Trouble is, the state isn’t holding up its entire end of the bargain, choosing instead to abdicate some of its funding responsibilities. Local governments have to make up for the state’s shortcomings, usually resulting in higher real estate taxes and cuts in services.

Here in Pennsylvania, in one of the state’s gem cities, a drama is unfolding that could be a case study of what happens when state and local officials fail to cooperate.

The three major rivers that cut through western Pennsylvania’s Alleghenies -- the Monongahela and Allegheny meet to create the Ohio -- do so at what is today Pittsburgh. It’s a picturesque spot that offered the perfect place for water-dependent industrialists to set up shop, and in the 19th century the city came into its own as a bustling coal, steel and financial center, helped along by the Mellons, Carnegies, Fricks, and Phippses. The Heinzes were in there, too, also leaving an indelible mark on the city.

This is a city that over the past decade or so has swept up its coal and steel dust, spit-polished its downtown, and invested in its infrastructure and cultural institutions to give it a less industrial face and a more cosmopolitan one. Barges can still be seen pushing loads of coal and other raw materials up and down the rivers, whose banks were once home to more factories than today, and just a few blocks away there’s Marvin Hamlisch conducting the Pittsburgh Symphony Pops.

If Pittsburgh can reinvent itself, most any city can. Of course, it always helps to have among your citizenry the hugely philanthropic legacies of a handful of America’s leading industrialists, manufacturers and financiers.

That said, however, Pittsburgh is in need of its greatest transformation yet. The city’s got an $80 million budget deficit for 2004 and is scheduled to run out of money -- literally -- in about 90 days. In 2005, the city is projected to have an $85 million deficit. The cause in a word, according to folks who live here, is mismanagement. The Democratic mayor, Tom Murphy, is now proposing to sell off city-owned assets, such as swimming pools, recreational centers and asphalt plants. He also wants to cut more jobs and merge some services with Allegheny County, the latter being a common-sense suggestion that shortsighted municipal-employee unions are fighting.

And as we’re in the final week or so leading up to local city and county elections, well, you can imagine how charged the political ions are right about now.

But let’s get back to lessons to be learned here.

A local Republican state senator, Jane Orie, pushed to form a blue-ribbon panel of top business leaders to assess Pittsburgh’s finances, look for efficiencies, and make recommendations. The group was led by David Roderick, the former chairman of U.S. Steel Corp., and Elsie Hillman, a leading philanthropist and former Republican National Committeewoman. Roderick and Hillman pulled together 30 top business execs to do the work. The group’s report is complete, and it calls for the creation of a financial review board as well as a combination of new taxes and spending cuts. (Any new taxes wouldn’t kick in until some $45 million in cuts had been achieved.) Orie and other suburban state legislators are rejecting that plan, preferring spending cuts alone, though they, too, want the oversight board. The two Republicans, Orie and Hillman, are now publicly at odds.

It has also been mentioned that some form of -- get this -- tax reform be enacted. Sound familiar? The notion is that the state-local tax structure might be a tad out of whack, contributing to the city’s extreme financial woes.

There’s a standoff between the state and local government leaders, which is fueled locally by the same distrust that suburban voters the world over have for cities. In the meantime, Pittsburgh is drowning.

We’re fortunate in Virginia. As challenging as it might be to assemble a state or local budget in these tight economic times, there’s no Pittsburgh-like story to be found in the Old Dominion. None even close.

But what a value it would be for a few of Virginia’s elected state and local leaders to visit this three-river city and witness their on-going spectacle. They should see the gauntlets that litter Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, all thrown in soap-opera huffs, and all thrown for naught.

Virginia’s elected state leaders in both the executive and legislative branches need to get serious about tax reform. There must be a meeting of the minds on how to better fashion the revenue-sharing relationship between the state and local governments.

And local governments -- especially those major counties and cities that make up Virginia’s most concentrated population centers -- must continue doing their part by collaboratively divvying up resources and sharing service responsibilities to the extent laws allow.

Pittsburgh is in trouble, and state and local leaders are fiddling around in a way that’d make Nero blush. Meanwhile, Hamlisch and his Pops are over at the corner of Penn Avenue and Sixth Street performing in the elegant Heinz Hall.

Among Hamlisch’s numbers: "The Way We Were."

Let any elected or appointed official know what you think and how you feel by clicking here.

Post a message to Preston Bryant's message board

The Bryant Archive

Canadian Conservatives, broccoli, and Virginia Republicans

Arnold's 'Virginia Plan'

An Alaskan's influence on I-81

Rollison to VDOT

Hannity & Newman

Newer deal on Medicaid

Moody's blues

Warner's union bug