HARRISBURG -- To the disgust of Pittsburgh-area legislators, another House committee has given its blessing to two bills that would prevent Mayor Tom Murphy from using a state law for financially distressed cities to levy a wage tax on commuters.

The Appropriations Committee voted largely along party lines yesterday to send the bills, sponsored by state Sen. Jane Orie, R-McCandless, and Rep. Mike Turzai, R-Bradford Woods, to the full House.

Both measures would create a fiscal oversight board, with members named by the Legislature, that would recommend within 90 days ways to cut city spending to erase budget deficits. The House Finance Committee approved the bills last week.

Both bills would forbid city officials from seeking protection under Act 47, a state law enacted in 1987 that would allow the city to seek court approval to impose a wage tax on the 150,000 suburbanites who come into Pittsburgh each day to work.

Both bills were strongly opposed by Democratic Reps. Dan Frankel, of Squirrel Hill; Don Walko, of the North Side; Jake Wheatley, of the Hill District; Frank LaGrotta, of Ellwood City; and Tom Tangretti, of Westmoreland County. They said it was unfair of the General Assembly to simply demand that Pittsburgh "cut its way out of its deficit.''

The Democratic dissenters said that in 1991, when the Legislature created a fiscal oversight board for Philadelphia, the state allowed the city to impose a 1 percent sales tax.

Frankel complained that the two bills "will simply force the city to raise taxes on its own people and exacerbate the flight of residents from the city. The bills will handcuff the city and force it to make Draconian cuts in services or Draconian tax increases.''

Frankel and Walko vowed to fight the Orie and Turzai bills on the floor of the House -- which could happen later this week -- or else seek a House-Senate conference committee that would seek a solution to Pittsburgh's problems that would be palatable to city officials.

Frankel also has vowed to seek Democratic support to sustain any veto of the two bills by Gov. Ed Rendell. The governor has said he can't sign any bill that would not give Pittsburgh additional revenue tools to get its house in order.

Most of the 22 Appropriations Committee members who voted for the bills were Republicans, but there was at least one Democrat, Rep. Dwight Evans, of Philadelphia. He said he remembered how the Legislature helped Philadelphia a decade ago and vowed to keep working "to come up with a bipartisan solution for Pittsburgh.''

Despite his yes vote, Evans said he didn't think the Orie and Turzai bills, "by themselves, would solve Pittsburgh's problems.''

Another bill related to Pittsburgh's problems moved ahead yesterday in the House Urban Affairs Committee. The measure, sponsored by Rep. John Maher, R-Upper St. Clair, isn't as harsh on Pittsburgh as the Orie and Turzai bills, but it allows the potential commuter tax sought by Murphy only as a last resort.

Maher's bill doesn't place a total ban on the city seeking protection under Act 47. If such status were approved by the state Department of Community and Economic Development, the state would name a "recovery plan coordinator'' to propose solutions to the city's deficit.

Under Maher's bill, a commuter tax could be sought only if Pittsburgh had "completely exhausted'' all other options, such as levying a garbage collection fee or increasing the city's wage and property taxes.

Maher said his amendment "basically pre-empts the commuter income tax as a solution for the city.'' Democrats on the Urban Affairs Committee, including Reps. Tom Petrone, of the West End, and Michael Diven, of Brookline, voted for Maher's measure, saying they wanted to work with Republicans to find a bipartisan agreement for the financially beleaguered city.

"We need to avoid party-line stands,'' said Diven, who also represents several suburban communities and isn't a big fan of a commuter tax.