A surprising event happened this week -- Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy, City Council members and City Controller Tom Flaherty finally agreed on something. Unfortunately they agreed that the city faces a financial crisis in the upcoming year.

Not surprisingly, they bickered over the size of the predicted deficit and the remedies necessary to balance the city budget.

The fiscal forecast for 1997 was debated on Thursday during a review meeting of the city's first-quarter performance for 1996. The City Council members, Controller Flaherty and representatives of the mayor's office agreed that Pittsburgh faces a $20 million budget deficit in 1997, and a much higher one in 1998, unless spending is greatly curtailed.

However, the parties disagreed on whether the Murphy administration effectively cut spending in the first quarter of this year. While Acting Budget Director Art Rullo stated that city spending was down $5.3 million from last year and revenues up, Controller Flaherty claimed that spending was up $3.2 million from the first quarter of 1995.

Although City Council President Jim Ferlo and Councilman Bob O'Connor have both been very critical of the mayor's handling of the fiscal dilemma, Mayor Murphy maintained this week that his 1996 budget is $9 million lower than last year's. And, through savings in workers' compensation, pension payments and health care, Murphy plans to cut another $20 million in 1997.

One of the mayor's cost-cutting measures, attempted this week, was met with public outcries. The mayor's office halted the early season preparations at most of the city public pools, due to lack of funds. The action would have threatened the scheduled summer openings of the pools.

When the public's disapproval of the plan reached the offices of Murphy and City Council, the mayor announced that he would allocate unspent federal funds to prepare the pools and open them on schedule.

Now, if only the other spending items on the city's budget were as easy to resolve :-}

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