Community leaders from the Mon Valley met Monday in McKeesport to discuss the future of the Mon-Fayette Expressway and their role in seeing that the troubled toll road is finished.

The event, held in the Palisades in McKeesport, attracted about 40 people from municipalities along the Mon-Fayette corridor. The session offered opportunity for finger pointing -- some in attendance felt the Murphy administration and the City of Pittsburgh had been responsible for stopping the momentum of the project in the 1990s -- and debate over whether the turnpike commission should consider finishing the expressway in stages.

The Y-shaped road, which ends at Route 51 in Jefferson Hills, is designed to connect Jefferson Hills with Monroeville and Pittsburgh.

But the discussion kept turning back to one issue as the cause for the unfinished road: a lack of funding from the state.

Frank Kempf from the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission said a shortfall in funds was the reason the commission couldn't purchase the right-of-way needed to get the job done.

About 35 miles of the road are finished and open for operation from the West Virginia border to southern Allegheny County.

Joe Kirk, of the Mon-Fayette Expressway Association, told the mayors and council members attending that if they thought their communities could benefit from the expressway being completed it was their job to fight for it.