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Mayor Tom Murphy: “Don’t Better Yourself In Politics… Better The World.”
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Written by Robert Pell, The Eagle Senior Writer
All it takes is a simple whim. A whim or an idea that people thought of constantly but one person decides to take action and make a change; it is those who take action that are prepared to understand what the people want and implement it into actual change. These can be regular people like you or me honestly just trying to help their community, and you can see same people representing their people and working on a larger scale. Tom Murphy was of the latter, he was a man who led our city for 12 years and made necessary choices for this city to survive.
Before Tom was mayor he was nothing but an average citizen. He worked at the Pittsburgh built business of Alcoa in the research department. He was involved in his community, and very interested into making a difference in the Northside community. The Northside was riddled with shootings and “traphouses”, this was an unsafe place and Tom wanted to make a difference. So he sent a letter to his local state legislator, explaining the situation and asking for help in cleaning up the neighborhood. The legislator refused, which in my opinion almost goes against his civic duty. Tom must have felt the same way because after this incident he decided that during the next election he would run against him for his spot in the state house.
Running in this election would spark the beginning of Tom’s political career. He already had his platform laid out he of course would be fighting for the betterment of our communities. So, the question was then how would he let the people know he was on their side. He set out with a hard work ethic a friendly smiley and some trying ears to every single house in the district’s house and asked what they felt their community needed to change. The district he was running to represent covered the Northside and Lawrenceville; so you have to imagine how many times a day this man knocked on someone’s door. It was because of this predominant effort that Tom won the election and found himself in Harrisburg for 14 years.
Tom had helped his communities better themselves but knew he could do more for his city of Pittsburgh. So, he decided he would try and run for mayor. Well that didn’t work out so well, he lost and went back to legislation until 4 years later he ran again. He took to the same routine as before, visiting houses but this time it was more than two neighborhoods. Over the course of the election he visited 50,000 houses it took him 6 months every day to complete that task. He explained to everyone how he had a desire to work with people and to change the community and they agreed. He also explained some fundamentals about politics I would say the key note would be, “Don’t better yourself in politics better the world.” Another note is that if you want to properly run for something than you need money to do so. People finance these elections so that they can influence the government and people finance these elections so that they can honestly improve the government, Tom was only looking for the latter. Tom would become the mayor of Pittsburgh in 1994 and hold the position until 2006.
Pittsburgh had what politicians refer to as a “strong mayor” this meant that the mayor was a public persona and the chief admin officer. When Tom was mayor he immediately noticed how people had no appreciation for city tasks. He explained to us how that when he was mayor Pittsburgh was failing like Detroit; from 1970-1990 500,000 people left Pittsburgh. There was no opportunity, it was the most disgusting environment in the country, and was the second oldest city in the country (speaking of course in terms of the age of the citizens in the city). Pittsburgh had trouble and Tom had the answers. The tax structure at the time was set so that 2/3 of the taxes came out of property tax for those living in the city. This was killing the city because 320,000 lived in the city but during the day 750,000 come to work. 2/3 of the people working in Pittsburgh didn’t live here which meant they were tax exempt just like 40% of the land in Pittsburgh is tax exempt. So, Tom had to change the tax structure to save Pittsburgh he threatened to bankrupt the city so that those in the state legislature would help. This ended up working and the new tax structure was set into play.
Because of the leadership from Tom Murphy we have grown from the rut we use to find ourselves in. Our city was once the most disgusting but now year after year is regarded as the most livable. We have grown for the better and it was all because we were under the dictation of Tom Murphy who used politics not to better himself but to better the lives of everyone in our city.
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