Christine M. Flowers: City Hall's legal eagles

MAYOR Nutter might want to put a call in to the Philadelphia Bar Association's lawyer-referral service. Given the legal advice emanating lately from the city solicitor's office, City Hall could probably use an upgrade.

First, in the waning days of the last administration, the municipal attorneys bowed to pressure from the gay, les- bian, bisexual and transgender community and advised that an all-out assault on the Boy Scouts was not only required but legally justified because of a Boy Scout policy (supported by a Supreme Court ruling) on gay Scouts and Scout leaders that rubbed them the wrong way.

Apparently, the city's lawyers thought it was a good idea to find a way to break an agreement entered into more than eight decades ago whereby the Scouts would erect their building on city property, maintain it at their own cost and pay no rent.

In exchange, they'd provide valuable services to the city's boys. That would be ALL the city's boys, since no one ever asks about sexual orientation before allowing you to join. But the solicitor's office agreed with the activists who said the Scouts were discriminatory and therefore shouldn't be allowed to "benefit" by occupying prime real estate free of charge.

So the solictor's office did all of that "party of the first part" stuff that we lawyers are so fond of, drew up the official-sounding paperwork, and tried to evict the Scouts from their own home. Problem is, the city didn't expect the boys to get a lawyer and file a countersuit on the grounds that their First Amendment rights were being violated. Now all of us, even those of us who support the Scouts 100 percent, have to pay for the city's crusade against this worthy organization.

Strike one.

Then the lawyers told an obviously receptive Mayor Nutter that he and City Council could pass their own package of gun-control legislation.

Even after consulting with the Police Department, the solicitor's office concluded that the mayor and Council were authorized to try to restrict the flow of guns in Philadelphia, apparently untroubled by the fact that the state constitution prohibits municipalities from making their own laws affecting guns. The commonwealth has this power, not cities.

But what's a constitution when you have the gun-control activists in your corner! The mayor and Council, with a comforting memo from the lawyers, brazenly went ahead with their gun project.

And even when the D.A. bravely told them she wouldn't enforce clearly unconstitutional laws and the courts invalidated most of the legislation after the National Rifle Association filed suit, the solicitor's office insisted it was justified in wasting taxpayer money pursuing this ideologically motivated stunt.

Yes, blood flows in the streets. Yes, families are grieving the loss of loved ones. Yes, we need to find a way to stem the tide of violence. But news conferences with widows and orphans, and the false bravado of passing laws that will be invalidated before the ink is dry on the mayor's signature are not the way to do it.

Someone should have told that to the mayor.

Someone with a law degree.

And then we have the most recent example of Keystone Lawyering: trying to close libraries without following a 20-year-old policy requiring the approval of Council.

The mayor is faced with a severe budget shortfall. Engaging in triage, he made some tough calls and decided that a number of lesser-used library branches would be placed on the chopping block. He thought he could get away with it under the city charter. One guess as to who told him it was OK.

But people who read books are as passionate as those who tie square knots or belong to the NRA. And book readers also know how to hire attorneys. So community activists filed suit against the city, claiming that the Nutter administration violated the law by making a unilateral decision to shutter public buildings. And a Common Pleas judge told them they were right. Which means, unless the decision is overturned on appeal, the solicitor's office has struck out again.

IF THIS WERE baseball,

we'd be moving on to the next inning.

But this isn't a game. It's the city that all of us support with our own blood, sweat, tears and taxes. We shouldn't be forced to pay for fanciful lawsuits and questionable tactics that, well-meaning as they might be, are still legally unsound.

So knowing the mayor's very busy and probably doesn't have much free time, I did the legwork: 215-238-6300, ext. 4.

Lawyers are standing by. *

Christine M. Flowers is a lawyer.

E-mail cflowers1961@yahoo.com.