TAMPA – A lawyer for the sex-entertainment industry condemned as “junk science” the research Hillsborough County is relying upon to justify tighter regulation of strip clubs and adult businesses.

The county claims the clubs increase crime, spread disease and drag down property values.

The analysis is shallow, and the assumptions are wrong, said Luke Lirot, addressing Hillsborough Commissioners on Wednesday.

“What I have found in reviewing the studies … is that the vast majority of these are simply junk science,” said Lirot, who represents several owners of adult business in the Tampa Bay area and the Southeast.

County commissioners ultimately postponed until September a decision on whether to require strippers and other sex-industry employees to purchase licenses and abide by a raft of new standards controlling their behavior and the settings where they ply their trade.

They did so after Lirot dumped volumes of studies and other material on the board late Tuesday aimed at debunking the idea that sexually oriented businesses cause harmful secondary effects that justify intensified government regulation.

Commissioners also heard from their own consulting attorney, who assured them that they were on a legally defensible course. He said the county was under no obligation to compare crime rates near strip clubs, for instance, with those of businesses that aren’t sexually oriented.

“The county can rely on any information reasonably believed to be relevant,” said Scott Bergthold, whose law firm in Chattanooga, Tenn., specializes in helping local governments strengthen and defend their public nudity laws.

Commissioners received encouragement from a capacity crowd, the overwhelming majority supporting stiffer regulations for sexually oriented businesses.

Many quoted Scripture or their belief that the United States was founded on Christian principles. Others said they were tired of living in a community known for its many strip clubs.

“God said modesty and decency are important and should be valued,” said Denise Gossage of Valrico.

Others praised commissioners for tackling such issues.

“I’ve never seen a board quite like this that has been willing to take the stands that you take,” said Bob Gustafson, president of the Hillsborough County Christian Educators Association.

Many received a letter Commissioner Ronda Storms mailed to 6,000 people encouraging them to attend. The mailing cost about $1,900 in postage, and Storms said it was sent to people who have previously voiced interest in the topic.

“People have an opportunity and a right to know that we are going to be doing this,” she said in justification of the mass mailing.

The letter appears to refer to the recent arrest of the former wife and daughter of Mons Venus strip club owner Joe Redner on prostitution charges, as well as the arrest of an adult book store owner accused of possessing child porn.

Redner, who spoke at the meeting, accused some board members of being hypocrites and said the new law will cost the county millions in legal challenges when it should be dealing with more pressing issues.

“Overcrowded schools, gridlocked traffic and environmental rape,” Redner said. “That’s what you should be dealing with.”

In addition to requiring licenses of adult-business owners and their employees, the new rules would place size requirements on rooms where dancers perform, set lighting standards in sexually oriented theaters and ban touching of customers in bikini bars where alcohol is sold, among other things.

Bergthold has assembled several studies from around the country that suggest such behavior causes spikes in crime and illicit behavior, and that the adult businesses drive down surrounding property values.

Lirot’s experts said the studies don’t follow sound scientific methods and can be refuted by better analysis that suggests the opposite is true. The county’s studies largely fail to show a cause and effect between the presence of a strip club and increased crime, for instance.

Both lawyers were accompanied by “experts” who either bolstered or debunked a link between adult businesses and social ills. One of Lirot’s seemed to draw the most chuckles and snickers from the partisan crowd.

Terry Danner, chairman of the department of criminology at Saint Leo University, said he reviewed crime statistics in 32 cities of similar size, including Tampa, that have varying concentrations of adult businesses and could identify no trends.

One study showed a high concentration of crime in the vicinity of Raymond James Stadium during Tampa Bay Buccaneers home games. He said under the county’s standards, football games would be blamed rather than the assembly of a large number of people, some drinking alcohol.

Judith Lynne Hanna, a senior research scholar in the department of dance at the University of Maryland, whose education is in anthropology, said regulating strippers and not other dancers, like those who perform ballet, and would amount to discrimination. She said much of what takes place in strip clubs is similar to “da butt,” “freaking,” “booty dancing,” “doggy dancing,” “front piggy-backing” or “dirty dancing,” all intimate dance moves common at high school social events.

Several heads shook in disbelief.