Mt. Lebanon Needs Pittsburgh

Buried in yesterday's Post-Gazette story about an inter-governmental cooperation meeting in Oakland ("City tries to link with 35 close neighbors") was this quotation:

Mr. Miller, who spurred the meeting, offers the idea that the city and its neighbors -- from tiny Ingram in the west to big Penn Hills in the east -- may have areas of interest that differ from some of their farther-flung suburbs.

"What happens to the city of Pittsburgh is a lot more important to Mt. Lebanon than what happens in Upper St. Clair," he said. Public safety and traffic problems know no borders, and the core communities have more of a stake in services like Port Authority transit than do most of the county's other municipalities.

The speaker was David Miller, director of the Innovation Clinic at the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, who convened the meeting.

There are fewer and fewer reasons these days to read the Post-Gazette (and that's too bad), but this was a good story, and Mr. Miller is on to something important.