To the chagrin of Seattle City Council Member Margaret Pageler, last week's Stranger broke the big news at city hall: Pageler was hoping--unbeknownst to her council colleagues--to leave her seat prematurely for a job with the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce. ["Margaret Pageler Wanted to Leave City Council," Josh Feit, Feb 28.] The Chamber is Seattle's most powerful business lobby, with nearly 3,000 members. Pageler applied to be Chamber CEO, but didn't get the post.

An hour after The Stranger called Pageler's office and startled her assistant Linda Stores with questions about Pageler's Chamber of Commerce job application, Pageler herself quickly placed calls to her colleagues. Pageler's last-second damage control mission--letting her colleagues know that she had been courting the Chamber of Commerce and intended to leave her elected post mid-term--doesn't diminish the harm Pageler has done to her own political credibility. (She also failed to reach everybody. Council President Peter Steinbrueck didn't find out about Pageler's secret job hunt until he read about it in The Stranger.)

By quietly applying for a job at the Chamber of Commerce (a group with plenty of issues before the council), Pageler has raised a host of ethical questions. The biggest question is, should she resign? Indeed, if Pageler isn't interested in being on the city council anymore, should the public be paying her $84,814 a year to keep a seat warm at city hall?

"It seems appropriate that if you don't wish to continue to be a public servant--to be a city council member--that you would resign or let the public know that you were not seeking reelection," says Council Member Judy Nicastro, who learned of Pageler's intentions after getting Pageler's phone message late on Tuesday afternoon. "Hence there would be no appearance of--or direct--conflict of interest in pursuing another job."

Nicastro is right to raise questions about conflicts of interest. What is the public to make of Pageler's recent work on issues of interest to the Chamber of Commerce? Seattle voters should feel uneasy about Pageler's positions on recent (and ongoing) council debates that the Chamber took an interest in: Steinbrueck's downtown parking tax, water-hog rates, and requirements for downtown developers. On these issues, Pageler's position was in line with the Chamber's.

Other cities, like L.A. and NYC, have laws against this type of political chicanery. "You cannot negotiate even the possibility of future employment with any person who has a matter pending before the city," says Barbara Freeman, spokesperson with the City Ethics Commission in Los Angeles. "A public servant cannot seek a position with any company they are dealing with in their city job," says Mark Davies, executive director of the NYC Conflicts of Interest Board.

Lucky for Pageler, Seattle isn't as finicky about ethics. "We don't have a provision that says you cannot apply for a position with someone who does business with the city during your term of employment with the city," says Carol Van Noy, executive director of Seattle's Ethics and Elections Commission. Van Noy says there could be legitimate questions if Pageler suddenly started voting out of character, and it turned out Pageler had been courting a job with an interest group that supported those votes. But Van Noy doesn't see a conflict in this case. "If she voted some way that she wouldn't have voted in the past," Van Noy says, "then a question might be raised, but [being against] Steinbrueck's parking tax, for example, that's consistent with [Pageler's] record."

Van Noy's "consistency" argument is flawed. A politician shouldn't have to vote a certain way to trigger ethics alarms. There should be an objective ethics standard in place that prevents conflicts before they happen. Case in point: The council's most important legislative business-- passing the budget last November--took place while the Chamber CEO hiring process was in play. Someone in line for the Chamber CEO job should not have been allowed to make city budget decisions. By definition, this situation is a conflict of interest, and it shouldn't be allowed, despite the fact that Van Noy isn't aware of any corrupting outside influence.

"If people found out I was out there applying for a job at the Tenants Union," says renters' rights advocate Nicastro, "could you imagine [the outcry]?"

Nicastro is right. For example, just because we already know that George W. Bush is a pro-business Republican who advocates weaker environmental standards, would it be okay with the public if, while Bush was President, he was also seeking employment at Exxon Mobil, or General Motors?

For Kent Kammerer, a Greenwood resident and member of the Seattle Neighborhood Coalition, Pageler's jockeying is dispiriting. "When you see something like that," he says, "it's disappointing--to see what you expected all along come true. That the focus in city hall is on downtown."

Citizens aren't the only ones who should be upset. Pageler's colleagues certainly deserve an explanation. "What's disappointing to me," says Nicastro, "is not knowing: Does she want to be a city council member or not?"

Certainly, most people have a right to seek a new job if they're unhappy at their current one, and most people will apply for a new job while holding onto their current position. But Pageler's current job isn't just any job. She holds elected office, a public trust, and her first loyalty is supposed to be to her constituents. She works for the public, and is supposed to make decisions that are in the public interest. If Pageler is applying for jobs with organizations that have business before the city council, the public can't be sure that she is putting their interests first. If Pageler, who did not return our call, is unhappy at city hall (with nearly two years left in her term), she should resign. She shouldn't be job-hunting on the public dime.

josh@thestranger.com