It has been only 14 months since a citizens advisory committee on the efficiency and effectiveness of city-county government recommended tighter connections between the City of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, including a referendum on consolidating the two governments.

Since then, progress has seemed slow, with elected officials trying to determine who should take the lead and whether a referendum on full consolidation or efforts to combine individual departments should come first. As a result, after the recent forum on this topic that our two organizations cosponsored, some civic-minded observers wrote despairingly that hope for real change was dwindling. The Post-Gazette cautioned against letting municipal consolidation slip to the "graveyard of ideas."

We think this despair is unwarranted. While we recognize that change is not zipping along, we also see unfolding an important positive development. For the first time in recent history, a critical mass of leaders has come together, without posturing, for serious discussion on how we can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of our local governments.

At our forum on June 5, more than 200 people heard presentations from the Charlotte, Miami and Louisville metro areas that have implemented three very different forms of city-county relationships. They spent most of a day considering alternatives on a complex topic that, on the surface, does not seem very exciting. (When is the last time you heard a party conversation turn to the burning question of whether Pittsburgh and Allegheny County should merge their whole governments or just their purchasing functions?) Yet speakers and audience were animated and passionate on the topic, even during breaks when every sidebar discussion we overheard was about good government, and not good weather or great sports teams. At the end of the day, more than 100 participants completed surveys recommending further discussions on city-county relationships.

We have heard repeated complaints about how little has happened since the citizens advisory committee report. We beg to differ. Louisville's consolidation of city and county governments took 40 years to be realized, after a first failed referendum on the issue occurred in 1964. Here, we have moved from the release of the committee's report to a powerful level of interest among citizens and public officials in 14 months.

Consolidation of governments is only one possible solution for our region and our forum highlighted several of the alternatives. Charlotte has never merged with Mecklenburg County, N.C., but has achieved efficiency and a consistently customer-focused ethic by rigorously considering who can best deliver each service and by combining many duplicative functions. Miami-Dade County's federated style of government has provided wide-ranging opportunities for economically strapped municipalities to benefit from county services while retaining their distinct municipal identities.

These are intriguing and complicated alternatives that require and deserve time for study, reflection and communication.

For such revolutionary ideas for our region, 14 months since the citizens committee report is a blip on the screen. We are not pollyannas here, but believers in persistence and the will of the people, which may emerge too slowly for some, but will, indeed, emerge.

We will sponsor another forum and another one after that and maybe more. The leadership of this region and the wise people who reside in it deserve good information and the time to turn it into action for positive change.