San Diego City Council President Scott Peters and Councilmember Brian Maienschein are running for city attorney. Because both voted to support the discriminatory policies of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), neither deserves our support.

In 1990, the City Council approved an ordinance (which I helped draft) prohibiting the city from engaging in business with groups/businesses that engage in bias based on sexual orientation. Another ordinance, passed later, prohibits the city from granting a subsidy to groups that engage in discrimination.

In 1992, then City Attorney John Witt informed the city manager that the city could not continue to subsidize the Boy Scouts of America because of the city charter amendments. The city had leases with the local Boy Scouts for land in Balboa Park.

Local BSA leaders, led by now County Treasurer Ted McAllister and Witt, asked for time to try and persuade the national BSA to change its policies.

But by 2002, the national group remained adamant that it wasn’t changing its membership policies and it wanted to remain in Balboa Park rent free for another 25 years.

So, in 2002, rather than do the courageous thing – as Toni Atkins and Donna Frye did – and give the BSA the boot, Councilmembers Peters and Maienschein voted to extend the lease and subsidy with the BSA. Peters called the matter “a complicated constitutional issue.”

But it was far from a complicated legal issue, and he knew it.

San Diego’s law is crystal clear. The city cannot do business with, and it especially cannot give a tax-funded subsidy to, a group that engages in discrimination based on sexual orientation, which the BSA admittedly has done.

The statute isn’t complex; it’s a no brainer.

By voting to extend the lease, both Peters and Maienschein showed why neither is competent to be city attorney: Apparently, neither can read nor understand plain English, which, fortunately, is still required for members of the legal profession.

They evidently don’t take good legal advice either because John Witt, in 1992, opined that the so called “Human Dignity Ordinance” required a re-negotiation of the BSA leases.

Neither Peters nor Maienschein truly believes in civil rights when it means taking a stand that may be politically unpopular. Virtually everyone respects the work and service of the Scouts, but we don’t want them to discriminate, especially with tax subsidies.

As most know, the vote to extend the BSA’s lease has cost the city millions in legal fees and costs, and every court has ruled in favor of the parents and children challenging the city’s position.

The vote on the BSA lease was also costly for another reason: It opens the possibility of making exceptions for other discriminatory groups. Making an exception for the BSA would require the city to allow business with groups, for example, such as the Ku Klux Klan or groups that advocate the overthrow of the U.S. By law, the city cannot pick and choose which “discriminatory” groups it will subsidize.

Regardless of their stance on the BSA, most San Diegans will vote against Peters and Maienschein because of their role in the scandal detailed in the now infamous Kroll Report. Ironically, both explained their votes to underfund the pension, and their votes to diverting sewer fees to the general fund as being based on “bad legal advice.”

However, as Mike Aguirre has pointed out numerous times, it may be one thing for Toni Atkins (a non-attorney) to make such an excuse, but it’s quite another matter when licensed members of the California Bar do the same, as also did then Mayor (and former Judge) Dick Murphy.

Maienschein, Peters, and Murphy campaigned for office (as is Judge Jan Goldsmith now) on the bases of their legal backgrounds. And so most voters would expect them to be able to do what a first-year law student (or paralegal) can do: research a simple issue.

Any reasonable lawyer, within a few minutes, would have discovered authority that says “Don’t lie about your financial condition when selling bonds.” It’s called securities fraud. Oh!