One of America's leading apostles of city-county consolidations assessed Pittsburgh as ripe for a merger of local governments yesterday, but Mayor Tom Murphy demurred, blaming racism in the predominantly white suburbs as a major impediment.

"If we don't confront that attitude, then we're never going to have a serious discussion about consolidation," Murphy said at a breakfast meeting of the Urban Land Institute.

The mayor complained that some of his suburban friends are afraid to visit him at his Perry South home "because there are young black kids hanging out in the street."

Presenting what he characterized as further evidence of suburban racism, he cited opposition in Hampton to a proposed methadone clinic that might draw heroin users from the city.

"It's as if people in the city of Pittsburgh have horns and so we're going to rape their kids and rob their houses," Murphy said.

At the same event, William Hudnut III, who presided over Indianapolis' consolidated government as a 16-year mayor, added his voice to the growing chorus of those bemoaning southwestern Pennsylvania's multiplicity of municipalities.

"It is worth a try to get out of the 19th century and into the 21st as far as governmental jurisdictions are concerned," Hudnut told an audience of 250 at the Renaissance Hotel, Downtown.

Hudnut, now a senior fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Urban Land Institute, conceded that racism can impede consolidation efforts, calling on people to "embrace diversity as a core strength."

He served as mayor of Indianapolis from 1976 to 1991, having assumed office six years after the city and Marion County merged to form "Unigov." Police forces, fire departments and school districts remain independent of one another, but most other services are provided countywide.

"I'm here to tell you it worked in Indianapolis, and it might help here," he said.

Indianapolis and Marion County not only realized cost savings, they also formed the country's 12th largest city, making it easier to attract development -- and the former Baltimore Colts, he said.

"One of the plusses of getting your governmental house in order is your image improves," Hudnut said. "It set the stage, it created the platform, for us to move ahead."

During his remarks, he quoted liberally from his own institute-published book, "Halfway to Everywhere." It includes a chapter on Wilkinsburg, which he referred to as a "metropolitan pivot point," meaning its decay, if left unchecked, could spread to other suburbs in eastern Allegheny County.

The book, published this year, focuses on "first-tier suburbs," municipalities like Wilkinsburg that lie close or adjacent to central cities.

Hudnut lamented the state's inequitable system of school funding, which ties the fortunes of districts to the size of their property tax bases. One mill of taxation in Wilkinsburg generates only $62,000, while a mill in North Allegheny School District yields $600,000, he noted.

Hudnut also bemoaned the region's land-use planning, or lack thereof. When measured as a ratio of new development to population growth, southwestern Pennsylvania leads the nation in urban sprawl, he said.

"This is a serious problem," he said.

Don Carter, a development consultant with Pittsburgh-based Urban Design Associates, told Hudnut that southwestern Pennsylvania is attracting few new employers, even as bulldozers pave over fields and forests.

In a region with little population growth, Carter said, "any new development is cannibalizing someone else" in the region.

Murphy joined in the teeth-gnashing over urban sprawl, referring to construction of the Parkway North as a hidden $650 million government subsidy for development in Cranberry and other northern suburbs.

The Pittsburgh mayor had a sympathizer and admirer in Hudnut, who hailed Murphy as "dynamic" in his book and called the city's well-documented fiscal crisis a "tragedy."

Referring to the city's $10-a-year occupation privilege tax, Hudnut said, "It strikes me as an outsider as much too small."

Hudnut also questioned why about half the businesses in Pittsburgh don't have to pay the city's business privilege tax.

Murphy told the audience, made up mostly of engineers, developers, architects and land-use planners, that the city is responding to pressure to consolidate more services with the county.

In particular, he advocated reuniting the city's Urban Revelopment Authority with the county's Department of Economic Development, a previous merger that county Chief Executive Jim Roddey terminated.

But the mayor added that the city and county long ago completed the most important merger, putting all social services under county control, leaving relatively little else to consolidate. He estimated that further consolidations of services, like combining purchasing and computer operations, will yield $5 million to $10 million in annual savings.

"That's obviously a lot of money, but it's not significant in terms of the [$42 million] budget deficit we are facing," Murphy said.

Roddey was scheduled to join Hudnut and Murphy as a panelist at yesterday's event, but he withdrew late Tuesday and sent in his place Norman Mekkelsen, the county's administrative services director.

Roddey instead met yesterday morning with county Solicitor Charles McCullough, who is scheduled to be in court tomorrow and next week in cases that could help define the chief executive's budgetary power.