A few days before Christmas, Pittsburgh mayor Luke Ravenstahl announced that he was shelving plans for a first-in-the-nation city tax on college tuition.

The tuition tax plan, which had drawn intense opposition from students and educational institutions alike, was intended to help close a $15 million annual budget deficit. As Ravenstahl agreed to drop the proposal, Pittsburgh’s universities agreed to bump up their voluntary contributions to the city, and to join with the city government in lobbying the state legislature for increased aid.

But Ravenstahl only ever had commitments from five Pittsburgh’s nine city council members to endorse the tax, and weakness in that support may have led him to cut a deal. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported last week that council support for the plan had begun “to waver” in the run-up to the vote. Crucially, the universities appear to have made no specific pledges of new contributions in exchange for the agreement.

A tuition tax proposal was earlier rumored to be a possibility in Boston, which is currently looking to increase university-based revenue, but Boston mayor Thomas Menino put the kibosh on that idea earlier this month, saying through a spokesperson that “burdening students isn’t what we should be doing.”