Gov. Ed Rendell is continuing to press for a fiscal control board for Pittsburgh that will have authority to quickly recommend new revenue options to balance the city budget, he said yesterday.

Rendell was scheduled to meet in West Mifflin on Thursday with local legislators to discuss plans to help the ailing city, but the meeting was put off. When it is rescheduled, probably in Harrisburg, Rendell said he will keep driving for an oversight board that can recommend city tax increases as well as spending cuts.

"I think the basic format for a deal is present. Everyone agrees that having an oversight board that has real power is in the long run the best way to go, but I have to be satisfied that oversight board is going to make a report quickly to the Legislature on revenue enhancements," Rendell said yesterday morning, following a speech to the African-American Chamber of Commerce of Western Pennsylvania.

The governor's position appears unchanged from when he vetoed state legislation Dec. 30 that called for a control board that could recommend spending cuts only. The legislation, sponsored by state Sen. Jane Orie, R-McCandless, also would have suspended Pittsburgh's use of Act 47, the distressed cities law.

The state declared Pittsburgh distressed Dec. 29, which could possibly allow it to charge income taxes on commuters. City Council, with Mayor Tom Murphy's support, took its first step toward tapping commuters Wednesday when it raised the parking tax to 50 percent. That helped spur local legislators to schedule new meetings on city oversight board plans.

The Legislature granted Phila-delphia a 1 percent sales tax in 1991, when its credit was at junk bond status, as Pittsburgh's is today.

When he vetoed the Senate legislation in December, Rendell said a control board's recommendations should be forwarded within 60 days after the board is formed. If lawmakers agreed to that stipulation, he said, he would wipe out the city's Act 47 declaration.

"I got huge credit across this country for saving all the money I saved in Philadelphia, but without the 1 percent increase in the sales tax the Legislature gave us in 1991 we wouldn't have made the turnaround that we made," he said.

"I have to be satisfied that there will be a serious consideration to revenue enhancements as well as cost cutting. I want both of them. ... If the Legislature does that, then I think we can take Pittsburgh out of Act 47."