In case there is any doubt about it, the four Androscoggin County Budget Committee members whose family members or relatives could be affected by an upcoming vote should abstain.

One of those members, Mark Samson, already says he will. The others should do the same.

The vote involves a difficult issue, an attempt by the current county commissioners to eliminate lifelong retirement health care benefits for some former and current county officials.

The unheard-of benefit provides guaranteed health care to elected officials who may have served as few as five years in office.

In 2004, the County Commission ended the benefit for new hires. But people who had already obtained the benefit were not affected, nor were some current elected officials who complete eight years of service.

Now, however, the current County Commission wants to eliminate the benefit for people who served with the understanding that they would receive health care coverage for life.

We have been through the pros and cons of this before. Yes, the dozen or so people receiving the benefit felt it was promised to them.

On the other hand, taxpayers working in the private sector gasp when they see elected officials with benefits that would seem absurd in the private sector.

Can you imagine, for instance, working for a company for five or 10 years in the middle of your career and then expecting lifetime health care coverage when you retired?

With medical costs increasing at double-digit rates, this is a benefit a majority of the current commissioners feel is unsustainable.

Only one of the Budget Committee members has a direct conflict, Helen Poulin, whose husband, County Treasurer Robert Poulin, is scheduled to receive the benefit upon retirement, which means Helen herself could get coverage as well.

The other three members have less direct conflicts, parents who would receive the benefit.

While these may or may not be conflicts in the legal sense, they give the obvious appearance of a conflict.

No one can be truly objective about something that personal, nor should we expect them to be.

In fact, with more than a third of the 11 Budget Committee members having conflicts, it will even be difficult for other members to vote their true feelings on the matter.

Friendships and working relationships could be strained by the vote.

But nobody said Budget Committee jobs were easy. The four members in question should abstain, and the remaining seven should vote their convictions.