Parking is tricky. A space seen from half a block away may wind up being too short to meet the driver's needs. Or it might be beside a fire hydrant. Or somebody might get to it first.

The latest proposal for fixing the city's ailing pension fund through changes to the city's public parking system is akin to the hunt for a good parking space. It might work out, but it's hard to tell from here, right now.

City Councilman Patrick Dowd and Controller Michael Lamb last week announced their idea for shoring up the pension fund without giving up control of the parking lots, garages and meters owned and operated by the Pittsburgh Parking Authority. Unlike Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, who proposed leasing them long-term to a private company so that they would generate $200 million, Mr. Dowd and Mr. Lamb would transfer ownership of several garages to the pension fund. The value of those assets would bolster its balance sheet, future income from the garages would go into the pension fund and the city authority would retain the rest of the parking operations.

The alternative plan would not raise the same concerns as the mayor's proposal. A company providing $200 million to the pension fund would demand a lease term of up to 50 years and might want the city not to build any new parking facilities. Critics also expect parking rates to rise once set by a private firm.

Which doesn't mean rates will stay the same under the Dowd-Lamb plan. Mr. Lamb said parking rates will be going up under either plan, but he said there would be more pressure on public officials to control them.

A plan that would let Pittsburgh use its parking facilities to raise its pension funding level to 50 percent would be preferable to a private lease. But there are too many significant and unanswered questions about the Dowd-Lamb proposal.

For one thing, there is no recent appraisal of the parking authority's holdings, so it's hard to say which garages might be candidates for transfer to the pension fund. No one knows how much money the garages could send to the pension fund and how that would affect other parts of the city budget that receive parking tax revenue. Also unknown is how receptive the Pennsylvania Employee Retirement Commission, which would have to approve the pension fund change, might be to a portfolio with such a large sum of physical assets as opposed to cash.

City Council should approve a request for the appraisal, which would be a good first step, but not the only one that must be taken before deciding whether this plan is the way to go.

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