Faced with a worsening pension gap shared by other cities statewide, Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl unveiled his fix to state senators yesterday, calling for fund consolidations, aid recalculations and defined contributions.

Speakers at the joint hearing of the Senate Finance Committee and Urban Affairs Committee in Oakland noted that the state has 3,100 municipal pension plans -- far more than any other state -- and Mr. Ravenstahl said that's part of the problem.

"That's incredible that it's that fragmented," the mayor said. "Clearly, what I will say, is that some sort of consolidation has to happen."

Small municipal pension funds could merge with their counties. Maybe every municipal pension pot for non-uniform employees should be poured into a statewide pool, the mayor said.

Most of the state's municipal pension funds serve fewer than 10 employees.

"You have all of these little plans with their own investment plans and it's very costly," said Morton Coleman, former director of the University of Pittsburgh's Institute of Politics, who is staffing a study group on pensions. He added that, politically, consolidating plans "is a problem" though probably one "worth the effort."

Mr. Ravenstahl also wants a rewrite of the formula for state pension aid -- an equation that gives Pittsburgh $9 million less than it got in 1989, while some municipalities get their entire pension outlay funded by Harrisburg. There should be a cap on the percentage of a municipality's pension costs the state covers, he said.

He would like to see changes in the law that requires cities to offer all employees defined benefit pension plans, in which the payout is determined by years of service, salary and age. He wants the freedom to offer new employees only defined contribution plans, in which the benefit is based on investment returns.

Mr. Ravenstahl said he would "prefer to put my money into a defined contribution plan, as would, perhaps, some of the younger employees we're bringing on." The city plans to start offering defined contribution plans to new, non-union workers who choose that option next year.

Union leaders have been "very defensive" about any shift to defined contributions, he said.

Firefighters union President Joe King, who was not at the hearing, said a defined contribution plan might leave "practically nothing" for the widows of firefighters who die while active employees. He noted that firefighters don't receive -- or pay into -- the Social Security system, so for some families pensions are all they have in later years.

Mr. Ravenstahl asked the senators to ban the consideration of overtime earnings in pension calculations. Thanks to an arbitration ruling, the city must pay firefighters' pensions based on 50 percent of their total earnings during their top earnings years, and premium pay can boost that by hundreds of dollars a month.

Sen. Wayne Fontana, D-Brookline, called Mr. Ravenstahl's plan "more realistic" than some he's heard, and said the Legislature could start work on pension reforms late next year.

Sen. John Pippy, R-Moon, said he hadn't settled on a fix yet. "The 800-pound gorilla is the amount of money that Pittsburgh and Philadelphia have as unfunded liabilities," he said.

At mid-year, Pittsburgh's pension fund held $330 million, or 37 percent of the $899 million it should ideally contain. Next year, the city plans to start putting 15 percent more than the legal minimum into its fund.

Philadelphia's fund has been around half-empty in recent years, a gap of some $3.8 billion.