A two-year delay over a simple city real estate deal is holding up a key juvenile justice reform, prompting the judges in charge of Baltimore's juvenile court to criticize Mayor Schmoke's administration.

The city's Circuit Court asked the city in 1992 to relocate the city's Civil Service Commission from the Courthouse East building on North Calvert Street to make way for a single, city-wide booking center for juvenile suspects.

The computers needed to implement the reform have been ready since April 18, but the booking center can't open because the city hasn't picked a new home for the commission.

"This is crazy," said Judge David B. Mitchell, who is in charge of the court's juvenile division. He said the state-funded booking center will save police time equal to adding 40 to 50 new officers to the city's 3,000-strong force.

"This is fiddling while Rome burns," he said.

Circuit Court Administrative Judge Joseph H.H. Kaplan said he asked the mayor two years ago to move the commission.

"The mayor promised me he would get them [Civil Service] out of here," Judge Kaplan said. "The original date was supposed to be Jan. 1. I don't care if he puts them in the street."

The booking center would let police officers bring juvenile suspects to one place, instead of booking them at one of the city's nine district police stations.

It would also let the police turn the suspects over immediately to the state Department of Juvenile Services, which would run the center.

Would free police

The system would free police from having to wait at the station for a suspect's parent or guardian, which they do now because Juvenile Services guards do not work out of the district stations.

The officers would also be able to turn over to Juvenile Services the task of driving juveniles who are not released to juvenile detention centers as far away as Prince George's County or on the Eastern Shore. There is no juvenile detention center in Baltimore.

Judge Kaplan said the booking center would get an arresting officer back on the street within an hour, compared to up to six hours when an officer has to take a suspect to Prince George's County.

"The police can leave quickly and not have to spend hours baby-sitting," said Mary Ann Saar, secretary of the state Department of Juvenile Services. She said booking all juvenile suspects in one place will help DJS get youths into counseling or supervision programs faster as well.

The center is expected to run until 1997 or 1998, when the booking function will be moved to a multi-purpose juvenile facility in Baltimore that would include a detention center and juvenile courtrooms.

The city and state have not settled on a location for that facility, however, so its schedule is uncertain.

The dispute over the booking center has already caused months of backstairs finger-pointing at City Hall, where top officials all support the plan. Yet the Civil Service Commission is not expected to move for several months after the city chooses a new home for the agency, to allow time for interior renovations.

Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke said the city got a late start on finding a new location for the commission because the city owns the courthouse, meaning the commission pays no rent. He said that meant the city had to find the money to lease offices, which would be at least $300,000 a year for Class B space, or find other free space.

"To move them, we would have to find rent-free space or rent at such nominal rates it would not affect other programs in our budget," the mayor said.

Judge Kaplan was notified last week that the administration has been unable to include money for rent for the Civil Service Commission in the fiscal 1995 city budget.

Mr. Schmoke said the problem became a crisis because of delay and indecision in the office of the city comptroller, which manages the city government's real estate affairs. The agency has been without a top leader since ex-Comptroller Jacqueline F. McLean went on leave last year to fight her indictment for allegedly adding a ghost employee to the payroll and allegedly trying to steer a city lease to a building controlled by herself and her husband.

Mayor's political ally

City real estate director Arthur E. Held, who works in the comptroller's office, said he is just insisting that proper procedures be followed, since a political ally of the mayor, H&S; Bakery Inc. president John Paterakis, owns the building where Mr. Schmoke said he favors moving the Civil Service Commission.

The mayor has also considered moving the city state's attorney's office and other agencies to the Munsey Building at 7 N. Calvert St. The building was purchased recently by a group led by Mr. Paterakis.

City Council President Mary Pat Clarke, who is running for mayor next year, blames Mr. Schmoke. She said the city had a chance to buy the Munsey Building itself.

Mrs. Clarke said the city also could have put the Civil Service Commission in The Brokerage complex at 34 Market Place, which the city bought in 1992.

She said The Brokerage would offer Civil Service rent-free space because the parking garage there generates enough money to pay the city's debt service on the property.

But both Mr. Held and Judge Kaplan said the mayor's office wanted the office space in The Brokerage to be held for private-sector tenants, despite the citywide 25 percent vacancy rate in old office buildings and the project's failure to attract tenants when it was privately owned.

"We should have bought the [Munsey] building; it was staring us in the face," Mrs. Clarke said. "But now we're going to have to rent it. Penny-wise, pound-foolish."

Indeed, buying the Munsey Building might still be the solution. Mayor Schmoke said last week that city officials touring the Brokerage believed that the available space is too small for Civil Service. The city doesn't have the short-term funds available in fiscal 1995 to pay rent for Civil Service at another building, he said, but does have longer-term borrowing capacity to buy a dTC building and retrofit it for city use.

"We're in a better position to buy than lease," he said.

But the sharpest exchanges over the Civil Service relocation are between the mayor and Mr. Held. The real estate director believes he is being painted as a fall guy for the delay in moving the commission, which he said didn't formally ask him to find new offices until March 21.

The mayor, on the other hand, said Mr. Held has made unproven charges about the motivations of city officials and consultants who are trying to move the agency to the Munsey Building, which is across Fayette Street from Courthouse East. Judge Kaplan said Mr. Held had made similar unsubstantiated comments to him, but said Mr. Held's theories didn't hold water.

"I thought his was a way overreaction to the backdrop of Mrs. McLean's problem," the mayor said. "He acted as if there were some kind of sinister plot."

Mr. Held said he has not done anything unusual in handling the lease, nor has he been intimidated by the attention paid to the McLean case.

"This is going by the book, as it should," he said. "This is marching along as crisply as it would with or without the McLean event having occurred."

Judge Kaplan said Mr. Paterakis offered to lease the city the building for as little as $3 a square foot annually. That is an exceptionally low rent if Mr. Paterakis would also pay for any needed renovations. The city would get ownership of the building in return for a 15-year lease, the judge said.

"You would have to be crazy" not to accept the deal, Judge Kaplan said.

Richard Alter, president of Manekin Corp., a real estate firm that worked for Mr. Paterakis on the negotiation, would not confirm the terms. But he acknowledged that at least one of several options called for the city to get the building at the end of the rental term.

Instead of settling on the Paterakis proposal, as the mayor urged, Mr. Held said he surveyed 31 buildings in the neighborhood around the courthouse. He wrote May 7 to the owners of the seven buildings that have enough space to accommodate the commission to request proposals.

The mayor and City Solicitor Neal Janey said no law requires the city to solicit proposals from a large number of landlords before signing a lease.

"He [Mr. Held] is acting on what he views as the appropriate procedure for his office," the mayor said. "I thought we had an emergency situation that justified different action."

Until last week, the administration had indicated that it might reconsider The Brokerage. City Finance Director William R. Brown Jr. said the city had looked at the complex again in order to avoid budgeting $300,000 for the Civil Service Commission's rent, and because the weak real estate market has kept the city from leasing the building to private-sector tenants.

"If there's a possibility it will remain vacant for a year or two, why not move a city agency there?" Mr. Brown said.

"If they locate a private tenant down the road, we can plan for that."

In the meantime, Judge Kaplan is stewing over the thought that his juvenile justice reform is being held up by something as simple as a real estate deal.

"All I want to do is get the job done, and it's very frustrating," he said. "It's like dealing with a pillow."