Give the Lone Ranger of the City Council credit for signing onto a concerned citizen's ethics charges against the councilor currently in charge of Santa Fe's government — whether or not those charges will get any results.

District 3's Miguel Chávez early this week accused District 4's Matthew Ortriz of unethical conduct by Ortiz's failure to 'fess up to nearly three years of conflicts of interest. That's how long the longtime councilor has been the attorney for a paving company — but that attorney-client relationship only came to fellow councilors' attention when County Sheriff Greg Solano's investigation into the company became public this spring.

Advantage Asphalt does business with the city as well as the county and other governmental entities. Pretty clearly, Ortiz has realized that he should have disclosed his ties whenever a decision on a contract with the company came up. In June 2009, says Chávez, he left a session just before the vote on a change order to an Advantage contract on the city's Pueblos del Sol contract. Yet, nearly two years ago, according to the complaint, he made the motion for, and voted for, the project's $174,000 contract. And he voted for four other contracts.

Once he had voted on an Advantage contract, did he figure he'd look foolish recusing himself from subsequent decisions? Or, as he insists in his response to the ethics complaint, has he "not participated in any meaningful manner" in any contract awarded to Advantage by the city?

Perhaps some answers — if nothing else, and that's the betting — will emerge from the complaint filed by Councilor Chávez. He joined community activist Fred Flatt — who used to serve on the city's Ethics and Campaign Review Board, but who grew weary of that board's pusillanimity toward some of City Hall's many ethical lapses.

Chávez has drawn scorn from Ortiz, who leads a majority within a council majority on many key decisions — but Santa Feans should be saluting him and Flatt for calling this case to the community's attention.

Ortiz may be absolved; our city's ethics rules are soft as Brie, and as full of holes as Emmentaler, so applying them to this case could prove problematic. But politically, the case calls to mind another cheese: It smells like Limburger.

Soon — perhaps even before the ethics board hears the Flatt-Chávez complaint — the community could hear about an ad hoc group, or maybe more than one, being gathered to demand more than the mild reforms so far being advanced by District 2 Councilor Rosemary Romero.

Like Santa Fe County's government, where commissioner Kathy Holian is advocating effective ethics reform, City Hall needs real rules — and enforcement — over elected and appointed officials, along with every employee.