Upon reading the Seattle Times editorial board castigate Bellevue City Councilmember Kevin Wallace for his undisclosed conflict of interest in the battle over routing light rail through Bellevue, my first thought was that this is what you get for making Ryan Blethen look stupid. Wallace had signed an agreement with a company seeking to run freight and passengers on an abandoned rail line the same week he used a guest editorial in the Seattle Times to argue for spending $670,000 of taxpayer money to study the same. Kinda embarrassing.

But the more I read today's editorial, the more I wonder why the Seattle Times has gone so easy on Wallace for what should be an inexcusable breach of public trust.

WHEN Bellevue City Councilman Kevin Wallace was pushing the city to use an abandoned rail corridor for a Sound Transit line, he should have disclosed that he was also negotiating a $30 million private investment deal along the same corridor.

Bellevue has hired an outside investigator to look into the matter. Good. The chronology of events has more twists than a roundabout but the public deserves a full accounting.

Okay. Sure. We need to investigate this further. I can agree with that.

But compare this relatively mealymouthed almost-condemnation with the immediate and harsh response of the ed board to former Seattle Schools Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson, when it was learned that an underling may have misspent school funds:

THE emerging details of the financial scandal at the Seattle Public Schools suggest one conclusion: Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson should resign. If she doesn't, the board should fire her.

I don't disagree, but remember, Goodloe-Johnson was never accused of any complicity or improprieties herself. She was ultimately held responsible for the actions of the administrators she hired, and rightly so, but as poor a manager as she might have been, she never betrayed the public trust.

The same cannot be said for Wallace, who has arguably used his elected office to help further his own business dealings without disclosing the blatant conflict of interest. That's not simply unethical behavior, it is totally unacceptable from an elected official. Wallace should resign. And the Seattle Times editorial board should have the guts to hold Wallace to the same high standard they held Goodloe-Johnson, and demand his resignation too.

Instead, the editors go so far as to raise the specter of conflicts of interests by Wallace's council colleagues, even while appearing to dismiss them:

Ironically, Wallace has accused his colleagues of potential conflicts of interest. Councilman Grant Degginger works for a law firm that has represented Sound Transit in other matters, and Claudia Balducci is on the Sound Transit board. Fair questions, but in view of Wallace essentially forming his own public-private partnership, his accusations read like the pot calling the kettle black.

"Fair questions"...? Really? Degginger works for Lane Powell, a large law firm that has represented nearly everybody at one time or another, and Balducci is on the Sound Transit board in her capacity as a Bellevue City Councilmember! There's nothing remotely "fair" about Wallace's pot-kettle accusations, to the point that it's ridiculous even to repeat them.

Bellevue has hired an outside investigator to examine Wallace's shenanigans, but whether or not Wallace is found to have violated the law or Bellevue's nearly non-existent ethics code is beside the point. Wallace had an obligation to taxpayers to reveal any potential conflict before spending $670,000 of their money.

Wallace didn't. And by the Seattle Times editorial board's prior tough standards, he should resign.