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He's been mayor for less than a month, but Regis McLaughlin has already been faced with a snowstorm and a big federal drug raid. Despite those minor crises and a whirlwind of year-end meetings with local, county and state officials, the city's 21st mayor says he's not overwhelmed.

McLaughlin, 76, of Grandview says he's got reliable managers to lean on as he acclimates to the city's top leadership position.

"One thing I learned when I was working in the mill is that you've got to have good department heads," he says. "They're all capable of running their departments, and I've told them that if you have a problem, come to me. I've got an open-door policy."

All of those department heads --- including City Administrator Dennis Pittman, Police Chief B.J. Washowich, Fire Chief Kevin Lust and Public Works Director Nick Shermenti --- will remain in place, McLaughlin says.

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McLaughlin has already got the support and well-wishes of city residents. As he stands talking in front of city hall on Fifth Avenue, drivers of passing cars wave and toot their horns; the mayor returns each wave.

McLaughlin is filling the one year remaining on the term of former Mayor Jim Brewster, who resigned this month after being elected to the state Senate. But McLaughlin hasn't yet decided whether to seek a full four-year term on his own.

"I want to get through this month and next month, and then I'll make a decision," he says. "I do have a lot of good people who've asked me to run."

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Like other Pittsburgh-area politicos, McLaughlin is watching the new state government in Harrisburg carefully. Outgoing Governor Ed Rendell, a Democrat, was generous to McKeesport and other Mon Valley communities, and state money funded a makeover of the city's Downtown Fifth Avenue corridor and reconstruction of West Fifth Avenue in the 10th Ward, as well as the completion of the Marshall Drive Extension.

But Governor-Elect Tom Corbett, a Republican, is preaching austerity, and he's also expected to be more closely aligned with rural and suburban areas than with heavily-Democratic urban communities such as McKeesport.

"It's a new regime, but regardless of who's there, we have to work with them," McLaughlin says.

Brewster's position in the Senate will be an enormous asset to the Mon Valley, the mayor says. "With Jim Brewster there now, it's absolutely going to help us," McLaughlin says. "Jimmy is certainly not going to shun the city."

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A lifelong city resident and graduate of the former Vocational High School, McLaughlin entered politics late in life.

After high school and then a year of college in Wichita, Kansas, McLaughlin took a job at U.S. Steel's National Works as a laborer to help support his mother and brother. He would eventually complete 30 years at National Works, including nine years in management positions.

When the plant closed for good in 1987, McLaughlin retired, opening a bar on Sinclair Street called "Rege's Place," and working part-time for the McKeesport Housing Authority and the city's sewerage authority.

It was former councilman and mayor Joe Bendel --- a longtime friend and fellow high school basketball referee --- who first convinced McLaughlin to apply for a seat on council that had been vacated by the death of Jim Honick. McLaughlin served more than 13 years on council and was the unanimous choice of his colleagues to complete Brewster's term.

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McLaughlin plans a somewhat lower profile than the highly-visible and hands-on approach taken by Brewster. "That's the way I was in the mill, too," McLaughlin says.

That doesn't mean that McLaughlin intends to stay silent; the new mayor is looking for opportunities to boost the city's revenues and to attract new jobs. McLaughlin is working on one proposal to increase the city's income that he expects to announce in a few months.

Rather than the one-time asset sales used to balance the past few budgets, he says he hopes it will provide a permanent, ongoing solution.

There have been other changes, besides the new name on the city directory. A city-owned Chevy Tahoe SUV formerly dedicated to the mayor's use has been turned over to the police department, and McLaughlin has pledged to return $10,000 of the mayor's $70,000 annual salary back to the city treasury.

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A priority remains bringing retail stores back into McKeesport, McLaughlin says, including on the former National Works site, now a business park run by Regional Industrial Development Corp. "I think RIDC has been trying to protect the Waterfront (shopping complex in Homestead), but they can't have it all," he says.

The flyover ramp now under construction at the foot of Coursin Street will make the National Works site more attractive to retailers and other potential tenants, McLaughlin says.

The mill site's largest tenant, a Dish Network call center employing 800, closed in March. A key priority for the city has to be attracting higher-paying jobs to the property, McLaughlin says, including jobs in high-tech fields.

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"Young people are not going to come back here or stay here so that they can make minimum wage," McLaughlin says. "They're going to leave and go find jobs in their fields."

(McLaughlin knows of what he speaks --- his daughter, Deborah Bazzone, lives in Florida, while his granddaughter, Lindsay, is in New Orleans to attend medical school. His grandson Michael went to George Washington University and also lives out of the Western Pennsylvania area.)

The city will continue to market Walnut Street as its new commercial corridor. Progress has finally resumed on a long-planned retail development at the intersection of Walnut Street and Route 48, McLaughlin says, and state Transportation Department officials are expected to install a traffic light at that intersection.

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