EDITORAL: Conflict issue is alarming

Elected officials can sometimes lose sight of the fact that they are held to a high standard of transparency and that their private and personal activities sometimes conflict with public service.

This was demonstrated in spades last week when Councilwoman Elizabeth Schneider sought to be seated as a representative of the council on the board of a new foundation being created by her friends.

The foundation was planning to hand out substantial sums of money to local groups that Schneider champions — and to the city itself.

It should have been obvious to Schneider, as it was to most on the council, that the arrangement was, as someone put it, “too cozy.”

The councilwoman could not be sitting on the council voting whether to accept donations from a group in which she also has a leadership position. She would quickly find herself in the position of giving money essentially to — herself!

Councilmembers — who normally would follow the highly esteemed Schneider into a dark hole or over a cliff — were throwing their hands up in alarm.

Perhaps overtaken by enthusiasm for the new foundation, Schneider pressed on undaunted, even at one point breaking into the council deliberations — from which she had officially recused herself due to the obvious voting conflict — to offer more persuasive information.

This is something that no member of the public would have been permitted to do, and would likely have drawn a rebuke or gotten them thrown out of the chamber.

Instead, the council ignored the protocol violation and continued deliberating on the merits of the request — finding more not to like.

In the end, Schneider, at last reading the writing on the wall and apparently not wanting to suffer a defeat, withdrew her motion to be seated on the foundation. (As if to punctuate her loss of credibility at this point, Councilwoman Cheryl Kinsman argued unsuccessfully that Schneider had no right to pull the item off the agenda.)

Schneider’s behavior is troubling not just because she is an influential elected official but also because she is employed by another entity that is seeking financial support from the city, South Coast Medical Center.

As the paid executive director of the hospital foundation, its fundraising arm, Councilwoman Schneider has a built-in conflict that could become a problem for the city and the hospital in the future if it is not handled with discretion.

We would hate to see the future of the hospital jeopardized by a city official who’s enthusiasm can so cloud her judgment.