Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato and Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy promised yesterday to think big in their efforts to merge city and county services, including plans to cut eight of the county's 10 row offices and ultimately merge their two governments into one.

Onorato said he will submit legislation to County Council in November, after the Nov. 2 general election, that would leave only the district attorney and the county controller as elected positions. Other row offices -- including the county's treasurer, sheriff and coroner -- would become appointed, starting in 2006.

The executive said he wants voters to decide on consolidating the offices in a May 2005 referendum.

At a luncheon sponsored by the League of Women Voters, Onorato said the action would prove to residents that leaders are serious about changing government, even though he said the move would not save the county much money.

"It's not going to save $10 million. We're lucky if it saves a million to $2 million if we can do it. ... I support it because, for whatever reason, over the last two years that [row office reform issue] has become a line in the sand. That has become the testing mark," Onorato said to the crowd of 150, meeting at Point Park University.

"I'm telling you it will be done and it's going to be another signal that we're going to the next phase of home rule government. I'm committed to changing the psyche of this region," he said.

Onorato and Murphy were at the luncheon to discuss efforts to consolidate city and county functions and talked of their efforts to jointly purchase supplies, dispatch 911 calls and other functions.

Soon, with the help of two state-appointed groups overseeing the city budget, the two Democrats said they want to study merging services like public works, police detectives and economic development programs.

The pair also said they wanted to study a much bigger step, which is merging the city and county governments themselves.

Following the model of Louisville, Ky., which merged its city and county governments last year, school districts and municipal governments countywide would stay in place, Onorato said, but the county government would swallow up the city, creating Metro Pittsburgh government instead.

Pittsburgh is currently the nation's 52nd largest city, but having one government representing Allegheny County's 1.27 million residents would make it bigger, on paper, than Boston, Dallas, San Francisco and other cities.

"There would be a city, it would be Pittsburgh, and it would be the seventh-largest city in America," Murphy said in an interview.

The wholesale city-county merger would face significant hurdles, both men said. Onorato said the county could not take on the city's huge pension and debt problems alone -- the city's pension fund is only 50 percent funded and debt makes up 23 percent of its annual budget -- without some kind of state help.

"Instead of having two public works, two economic developments, two computer rooms, it's all one at the county level, if you can do it at a lower cost overall. ... If the state can work on those two [pension and debt] issues, you can do it definitely," Onorato said.

Murphy -- who has discussed Metro Louisville's merger with that city's Democratic mayor, Jerry Abramson -- said the matter will ultimately be a tough choice for voters.

"I believe it'll be a decision between whether people want to save money and have more efficient services, or whether we like the sort of small-town atmosphere we have in many of our neighborhoods and local communities," Murphy said in an interview.

While discussions about that merger and row-office reform go on for the long-term, Onorato and Murphy said they are continuing to work on smaller-scale initiatives. In January, the city and county began joint purchasing of cell phones, following up on past agreements to cooperatively buy lumber, chain link fencing and other supplies.

Murphy is pressuring City Council to vote soon on plans to move city 911 dispatchers to the county's 911 center in North Point Breeze and have the county hire the workers in 2005. The move would save the city $800,000 in operating costs and some $6 million in looming capital costs, but council has delayed voting due to concerns the workers would lose pension and other benefits.

A preliminary vote on the 911 merger could be held Wednesday, but council may hold it another week as the city's Act 47 economic recovery team studies it. The team asked council Feb. 13 to keep alive talks on the merger, as well as other plans to privatize fleet management and asphalt production, so it could further analyze the initiatives.