The city eventually was declared financially "distressed" by the state after blocking all annexations, county-consolidations, nonprofit hospital or university tax levees, and commuter or suburban tax balances. To help recoup some of the city's losses during this period and to highlight the state's refusal to allow the city to grow geographically as the region's population had, with annexing or consolidating modern suburbs, Murphy was forced into the controversial 2003 decision to lay off a number of city employees, including Pittsburgh Police officers. Some of these jobs were later saved by dramatically increasing the city's parking tax as one of the few "commuter"-"suburban" taxes within the city's power to levy without state power to block, making it the largest such tax in the country. While at the time, the parking tax was met with ridicule and contempt, it has presently been analyzed as one of the key factors in rejuvenating the downtown core, while encouraging the growth of rapid transit, bike lanes and trails, and "green alternatives", and while providing a fiscal foundation for the city for decades to come. In light of the comparable city of Detroit's devolution into bankruptcy, Murphy's parking tax and its effects on both the fiscal health and downtown vitality in business and mass transit has become a case study in effective core city management.