Last week one of the local public's fiscal watchdogs issued a warning that sounded all too familiar.

He said government could soon face a financial crisis if it doesn't find more revenues or cut more spending. He said it was relying too often on one-time funding fixes and that a day of reckoning will come, perhaps as early as this year, when a budget deficit could result and then grow dramatically over the next four years.

Now when have local residents heard that before? Years ago, of course, in regard to the city. Today Pittsburgh is financially distressed under state law and its budgets receive the close watch of two state oversight groups. While its financial house is slowly returning to order, it has not been easy and it has come at considerable sacrifice.

No one wants to see Allegheny County in a similar predicament, and that's why Controller Mark Patrick Flaherty issued the warning. His annual comprehensive financial review urged county Chief Executive Dan Onorato and County Council to meet the problem head on with a long-term plan.

Mr. Onorato can be a tough budgeter, having already laid off workers, cut spending and pushed for savings through row office consolidation. But the elephant in the room, as everyone knows, is the property assessment system.

Allegheny County's $727.6 million operating budget relies on $261.6 million in property taxes. That's 36 percent of total revenues and by far the county's largest single source of funding. Yet Mr. Onorato froze property assessments (which is now under challenge in the state Supreme Court), meaning those whose homes are rising in value pay less in taxes than they should. And, of course, raising the property tax millage is still a vote most elected officials don't want to cast.

This is not a call for higher taxes, but rather the sanity to recognize that any source that delivers more than a third of a county's revenues can't remain capped interminably while costs are rising. Allegheny County won't be able to pass a new drink tax next year, or a new car rental tax the year after that. It won't be able to lay off hundreds more employees without consequence; at some point cutting fat becomes cutting bone.

Controller Flaherty is right to sound the alarm about the county's bleak financial future. It's time to deal with the elephant in the room.