Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl today swung firmly behind three tax changes proposed in the city's freshly minted recovery plan, saying commuters and nonprofits should pay more as the city gets serious about tackling its pension and debt issues.

Some state legislators, who would have to approve the tax changes, said they would be a hard sell.

The three tax-law changes in the Act 47 recovery plan introduced to City Council yesterday would cancel a proposed reduction in the 37.5 percent parking tax, boost the tax on people who work in the city from $52 a year to $145, and extend the 0.55 percent payroll levy on for-profit businesses to their tax-exempt organizations.

"We're looking at between $25 million and $30 million a year, annually," from those measures, Mr. Ravenstahl said. "That allows us to obviously be sustainable on the operating side of things for years to come, but also allows us to begin to deal with pension and debt, something that we've talked about for a long time, but don't have the resources locally to make any significant impact."

The city's pension fund is $639 million short of the ideal funding level of $899 million, and it still owes $723 million in bond debt.

Mr. Ravenstahl said the current $52 tax on those who work in the city is "significantly low" compared to the levies borne by commuters in other cities.

Past parking tax cuts have not been passed on to parkers, so the city has been "giving the tax revenue right into the pockets of the lot operators." And tax-exempt organizations, a consortium of which recently offered the city an average of $1.8 million a year for three years, must "contribute more than they do currently, whether that's through state action or through increases in voluntary [contributions]."

He said the administration first needs the backing of council, and then will take its argument to the Legislature -- soon.

The sales job won't be easy.

"If he thinks taxes are the first option, he's delusional, in this economy," said state Sen. Jane Orie, R-McCandless. "He needs to live within his means.

"If you think other legislators across the state are going to agree to raise the city of Pittsburgh's occupational tax to $145, you're out of touch."

State Sen. Wayne Fontana, D-Brookline, wasn't optimistic about the $52 tax, but thought that keeping the parking tax where it stands "is probably the easier one."

State Rep. Don Walko, D-Observatory Hill, also called the proposal to lift that tax to $145 "dead on arrival."

Extending the payroll tax to tax-exempt organizations, such as hospitals and universities, might also be politically difficult, he said. A previous effort to do that "hit the wall" because of "the power of the major tax-exempts in the city."