There was little left in Mayor Tom Murphy's office last week but a bike leaning against a desk. That and enough attitude to fill a moving van, plus about a dust bunny's worth of regret.

Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy

The man who, at his 1994 inauguration, compared his job to Tom Sawyer, "who got all of his friends to paint the fence," is leaving office in a town spattered with his vision. He's unabashed about a dozen years of roller-coaster governance, featuring controversial development efforts, federal oversight of policing and a continuing struggle to fix the city's finances.

"We might have overreached," he said of his administration. "One's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"

This is a different city from the one he took by storm in 1994.

Crime is down, and so is population. Jobs are up modestly, the city's debt up more. State overseers mold the budget and some functions have merged into Allegheny County, meaning Mr. Murphy might be the last mayor with the kind of power he's held.

	Online Graphic See a graphic that compares Pittsburgh in 1993 and today.

Then a state legislator from Perry South, he won the mayoralty in 1993, promising improved public safety, more jobs and better quality of life.

Within months of his inauguration, his plans were changed by three factors which would color his tenure: violent crime, the Pirates' financial straights and the city's worsening fiscal health.

Started with police

On the first day of 1994, some 200 Pittsburghers marched for an end to drug violence which had fueled 80 murders the year before. Mr. Murphy soon began an effort to modernize and professionalize the police department. In 1996, the city's murder tally was down to 46. The average since has been 49.

By 1996, Mr. Murphy had a different policing problem: An American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit alleging a pattern of misconduct and brutality. That led to a U.S. Justice Department investigation. The department demanded that the city sign a consent decree, pledging to better monitor and discipline officers.

The mayor fumed that his young son knew more about policing than federal officials. Last week, he was philosophical, saying the consent decree "was unnecessary, but helpful in accelerating the changes" he was already making.

Robert W. McNeilly Jr., the police chief since 1996, said the mayor's support for computerization and discipline made the force a national model. He showed a letter from the police superintendent of Belfast, Ireland, asking for advice.

"When I was in the Marine Corps, he was in the Peace Corps," Chief McNeilly said of Mr. Murphy. But the mayor and chief walked in lockstep.

Neither liked a measure voters approved in 1997, creating the Citizens Police Review Board. It holds hearings on officer misconduct and recommends discipline. The mayor refused to order officers to testify before it, and let vacated seats on its board remain empty for years.

"I never felt that the mayor was supportive of what we were trying to do at the level he could have been," said Tim Stevens, chairman of the Black Political Empowerment Project.

Complaints of police misconduct, neglect of duty and excessive force have remained steady at around 500 a year since 1999, said review board Executive Director Elizabeth C. Pittinger.

Development debates

If policing controversies peaked in 1997, development debates were just beginning.

That year, the region's voters rejected a plan to fund new stadiums, a convention center and other projects with a 0.5 percent sales tax. Undeterred, the mayor allied with county Commissioners Mike Dawida and Bob Cranmer to find another taxpayer-backed solution.

They rolled Regional Asset District tax funds, state grants, a hotel levy and private funds into an $800 million package.

"That caused one hell of a ruckus," said Gerald Voros, a Murphy supporter and one of the RAD board members who voted for the plan. "Tom paid the price for that for a long time."

The stadium plan epitomized the transformation of a neighborhood agitator into ... what? "Insider guy?" the mayor offered.

"He was going to do what he felt was needed, and if you didn't like it, too bad," said Rick Swartz, executive director of the Bloomfield-Garfield Corp., a development group.

With aides Steven Leeper, Tom Cox and the county commissioners, he built PNC Park, Heinz Field, and the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. Housing projects such as Broadhead Manor, Allequippa Terrace and Bedford Dwellings were replaced with homes or businesses. Trails snaked up the rivers. the South Side and East Liberty got infusions of commercial development.

"I had the incoming mayor criticizing me about buying the old Sears site" in East Liberty, Mr. Murphy recalled. He showed a Bob O'Connor flier from their 1997 race, saying the mayor was "mortgaging your future by spending millions on real estate that the city doesn't need and can't afford."

"But if we hadn't [bought] Sears in East Liberty, we'd be sitting here today looking at a vacant building, and a community that would've been decaying for an additional 12 years," Mr. Murphy said.

He said he lured Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus to Pittsburgh through a mutual friend, "kidnapped him" from a party and showed him the Sears site. So began East Liberty's ongoing rebirth.

"He is a dream mayor for a development person," said Mulugetta Birru, former Urban Redevelopment Authority director, now head of the Detroit area's development agency. "Pittsburgh is really considered as a city that has come back."

"More money could've been placed in the older neighborhoods," said city Councilman Gene Ricciardi, who also praised the South Side Works project.

Mr. Swartz said big projects got funding while community groups had to tighten belts. But they benefited from Mr. Murphy's insistence that projects make financial sense. "That kind of prodding caused a lot of groups, including our own, to really sit down and think about our development strategy."

Downtown, the big banks built back offices, and two department stores came and went.

Fifth and Forbes

In 2000, the mayor dropped a divisive $550 million proposal to build 600,000 square feet of stores on Fifth and Forbes avenues, Downtown. It had been pilloried by critics of its price tag and reliance on the seizure of properties by eminent domain.

That move wasn't motivated by pre-election concerns, nor by the retreat of potential anchor store Nordstrom, the mayor said. He said the deal went south because the developer, Urban Retail Properties, of Chicago, wouldn't ante up.

"I basically said, 'You put $10 million down now, and we'll match you and continue to move forward,' " he said. "They weren't willing to put $10 million down. ... I respect risk."

Mr. Murphy often put public dollars at risk, and sometimes he lost. Some $50 million in loans and infrastructure work paved the way for a Downtown Lazarus store which lasted five years.

The strategy was to grow Pittsburgh out of its budget problem. Pittsburgh grew, adding $5 billion in taxable property values, a 61 percent jump. But that translated into only $7 million more in property taxes a year, a 6 percent increase.

Mr. Murphy blamed "a property tax system that we don't control, that has been screwed up for the whole 12 years I've been mayor."

"Under Tom Murphy, fully 10 percent of the commercial property tax base was made temporarily tax exempt for economic development purposes," added Robert Strauss, a professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz School. Some of the mayor's plans diverted new taxes on developments for 20 years.

During the tough 2001 primary against Mr. O'Connor, the mayor said he had "managed to turn yearly runaway budget deficits into budget surpluses." But he'd done it, in part, by selling waterlines and tax liens.

The next year, he changed his tune and began pleading for state approval of new taxes. But the Legislature didn't move on the served-alcohol or payroll levies he suggested.

In 2003, Mr. Murphy tearfully announced 731 layoffs, or one in six city workers. If it was an effort to win sympathy in Harrisburg, it was undercut by his agreement in 2001 to raises and layoff protections for firefighters.

He has said the terms would have been awarded in binding arbitration anyway. But his agreement came weeks before a Democratic primary in which the firefighters endorsed him and he beat Mr. O'Connor by 699 votes. The sequence has prompted a U.S. attorney's investigation. That office hasn't said whether charges will be filed.

In late 2003, the city was declared distressed under state Act 47, and a team of lawyers now oversees its finances. By late last year, the push for state authorization for tax changes intensified. Even with Gov. Ed Rendell's support, progress was slow.

That was, in part, because of Mr. Murphy's poor relations with state legislators, going back to his 14 years as a House renegade.

"I get this criticism all the time that I can't get along with people," he said. "That's been nowhere more than true than with the state Legislature.... Understand, I consider that a compliment."

In November 2004, the Legislature approved a tax shift which added at least $22 million a year to city coffers. It was less than the city wanted, and some of it was shifted from the school district.

It came with a state-appointed Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority which can intercept new revenue if it doesn't like the city budget. It has rejected the mayor's budget for next year, but hasn't seized revenues.

"Four mayors, at least, have tried to change the tax structure," Mr. Murphy said. "They weren't successful. It wasn't pretty, but we were successful."

The city isn't out of the fiscal woods. Payments on its $822 million in bond debt eat up 22 percent of the budget, and most of that borrowing can't be refinanced. Nearly all of the debt increase the mayor incurred went to shore up pension funds which were near collapse, but they remain badly underfunded.

The Act 47 plan cut costs, largely by slashing the Fire Bureau budget by $17 million. Despite the cuts and new revenue, the city expects to spend nearly every penny it takes in next year.

"There's still a growing pension liability. There's still a growing health-care liability," said Jack Ochs, a University of Pittsburgh economics professor. "There's still a structural deficit that will require tax increases."

His failure to reverse 50 years of population loss is a "major regret," the mayor said. "And you know, we've built thousands of new units of housing," he said. He blamed continued loss on "the region's inability to create an alternative economic base."

"Suburbanization is still going on," said Chris Briem, regional economist at the University of Pittsburgh's University Center for Social and Urban Research. Plus Pittsburgh hasn't seen as much international immigration as other cities, he said.

Mr. Murphy said he still believed the mayor had to play Tom Sawyer. He said he put paint brushes into the hands of neighborhood advocates, developers, sports teams and many others.

"Did I make enemies? I sure did," he said. "Did I make a lot of friends, people who were willing to do something? Yeah."

And how's the fence looking, Mr. Mayor? "There's always more to paint," he said.