What if the $15 million hole in the city budget isn't really there?

Councilman William Peduto and City Controller Michael Lamb say Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's proposal to slap a 1 percent tax on college tuition is illegal -- and unnecessary. The city can get through 2010 without it.

They've been pushing a one-page outline that shows more than $15 million just kind of lying around, waiting to be picked up.

I'm always suspicious of easy money. Typing "million" is easy. Finding it is another story. Things such as "Improve Payroll/Parking/Income Tax Collection, $2 million," is a breeze to declare and a bear to collect.

"Some of them are shaky and that would be the Peduto part of it," Lamb quipped when I called him. "Some of it is very sound policy and that would be the Lamb part."

The most intriguing part might be an accounting change, and saying "intriguing" and "accounting" in the same sentence is a dangerous statement indeed. But Lamb and Peduto point out that the city lists as one budget line item all the pension and fringe benefits due to every employee in the city: That's almost $143 million, or about 38 percent of the city's proposed operating budget.

That whopping figure should be broken down by department to provide more accountability.

As it stands now, Lamb said, if an employee goes on workers' compensation, the manager doesn't care. In fact, he has a job opening. The boss is thinking "Who can I do a favor for?" when Lamb says he should be thinking, "That guy's on worker's comp. I've got to get him back to work."

City Finance Director Scott Kunka doesn't buy any of that. First, "Highmark doesn't send us the monthly bill by department." It would take a lot of manpower to break that down, and there would be "no magical savings."

In fact, when an employee is eligible for workers' comp, Kunka said, the position is left unfilled, and it can take one or two years to terminate a worker who isn't coming back.

Kunka also denied Lamb's contention that this one-size-fits-all fringe fund is "cleverly created" to hide money, purposely padded in advance to produce an annual surplus.

Lamb contends the benefits surplus this year should be around $6 million, while last year it was $5.7 million, and $8.2 million the year before. That would make the Lamb/Peduto Budget Alternatives figure of $3.2 million conservative.

"I don't think that's the case," Kunka said, but he had no contrary figures at hand.

"Those numbers are all very real," Peduto said. "In fact, they're probably lowball figures for the most part. They've all been vetted through the Act 47 process: approved by the mayor, approved by council, approved by the Act 47 coordinators."

(Act 47 is one of two state oversight groups looking over the city's shoulder to make sure its books balance.)

Peduto said he and Lamb started putting this together the day the mayor proposed his tuition tax.

"Michael and I felt that instead of having this ridiculous argument about something that's illegal, we'd better get something on the table that's doable, manageable and already approved by the mayor and council."

These men point out there's already a facilities plan to sell buildings, so do it and raise $1 million. The city owns the old four-story AAA building in East Liberty, which the city picked up for just $300,000 in 1993 for police use. Property values in that part of the city have soared in the past decade and a half.

Two old firehouses in Peduto's district, one in Bloomfield and one in Shadyside, also would bring a sizable return. One is right off Baum Boulevard on Millvale Avenue, just around the corner from a BMW dealership; the other is on Filbert Street.

The former is an emergency rescue station and the latter houses Emergency Medical Services administrators, but there are other places they could go. The city needs to expand its tax base, Peduto said.

"Nobody wants to move and everyone wants to keep things the same and that's why we go bankrupt," he said.

It should be remembered that both Peduto and Lamb ran unsuccessfully against the late Bob O'Connor, Ravenstahl's predecessor, in the 2005 mayoral race. It's also true many of their proposals are stopgaps, a one-year infusion of money.

Kunka said the mayor will work with anyone with reasonable alternatives, but he needs a long-term solution and still believes a tuition tax would be legal. He didn't think much of the Lamb-Peduto package stood scrutiny.

"Had we proposed that, we'd have been roundly criticized," he said.

He's probably right. Pick either plan. The 2010 budget remains a large mound of ifs.