It seems appropriate that State Treasurer Bruce Poliquin, the most ethically challenged member of Gov. Paul LePage’s administration, has declared his candidacy for the U.S. Senate, probably the most ethically challenged legislative body in the United States.

Poliquin has been criticized for failing to disclose his business ties on a state conflict-of-interest form (a lapse he has since cured by amending his filing), for improperly using Maine’s “tree growth” tax break to reduce his real estate taxes on 10 acres of waterfront property (a lapse he has also cured by taking the land out of “tree growth”) and for running a real estate development business while acting as state treasurer.

The last item involves Poliquin’s ownership of Dirigo Holdings LLC, which runs Popham Woods Condominiums in Phippsburg that includes memberships in Poliquin’s Popham Beach Club. Poliquin even appeared last year before the Phippsburg Planning Board on behalf of the Beach Club.

Poliquin’s participation in this business venture is particularly egregious. It violates more than just an inconsistently enforced and difficult-to-interpret legislative statute like the “tree growth” law. It runs counter to a fundamental provision of the state’s highest law, the Maine Constitution.

Article V, section III of the Maine Constitution states: “The Treasurer shall not, during the treasurer’s continuance in office, engage in any business of trade or commerce, or as a broker, nor as an agent or factor for any merchant or trader.” It seems a reasonable requirement to impose on the official responsible for the state’s finances.

Unless “business of trade or commerce” is read extremely narrowly to mean only the sale of goods (the kind you can bag or box and walk away with), it’s hard to make a straight-faced argument that Poliquin is not engaged in the kind of business barred by Article V.

State Attorney Gen. William Schneider wrote an opinion last month recommending that Poliquin insulate himself from these business dealings, although, on Thursday, the Maine Supreme Court, for technical reasons, declined a request by the Maine House of Representatives to issue an advisory ruling on whether Poliquin’s role in Dirigo Holdings violated the constitutional provision.

Poliquin is nobody’s fool. He received a first-rate education at Phillips Academy and Harvard, and has an impressive business resume, including previous positions at a Chicago bank, a Connecticut pension consulting firm and a New York City investment management company. In his brief stint as state treasurer, he has been a forceful advocate of fiscal discipline, and his critiques of the Maine pension system and Maine State Housing Authority have been trenchant if highly controversial.

So why didn’t he anticipate the conflict-of-interest problem? His excuse was that he didn’t have time to run the business and that the company was essentially managed by a bookkeeper. Predictably, he also accused Democrats of using the issue as a pretext to attack his political agenda.

Poliquin’s rationale misses the point, which has less to do with either politics or with any concern that he planned to spend governmental time, money or influence to further his business interests, than with the fact that governmental integrity is imperiled whenever any public employee, let alone a high-level one, tries to ride two horses.

First, to maintain public confidence, it’s critical to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Second, it’s important to keep all public officials far away from the slippery slope that can lead to a rapid slide into corruption when temptation gets too close to resist.

The ideal of the honest, disinterested civil servant is neither very old nor universally accepted. In most of the Third World and even in newly industrialized nations, like China, graft and corruption are pervasive, deeply imbedded practices.

In Europe, it took nearly a millennium for the ideal to develop. Until the 19th and early 20th centuries, most posts in European governments were held by members of the higher or lesser nobility and clergy, who were allowed and expected, in exchange for loyalty and service to the monarch, to use their influence at court to enrich themselves and their families. Russia’s Catherine the Great (1762-1796) went even further, showering wealth, titles and estates on a series of lovers, many of them drawn from the lower ranks of the elite military unit which guarded the sovereign.

In the United States, it took more than half a century and a series of reform acts, starting with Pendleton Act of 1883 and ending with the Hatch Act of 1939, to disengage federal employees and political parties from a symbiotic relationship in which party supporters voted, campaigned and raised money for a candidate, who, if elected, rewarded them with government sinecures, from which they continued to promote party interests.

Even where the ideal has been accepted, it’s not been easy, as a practical matter, to keep public officials honest, since there’s a natural human tendency to respond to financial incentives, and those controlling the levers of public power are prime targets for well-heeled individuals and groups more than willing to provide the incentives.

A tight ethical code — coupled with careful oversight, an effective mechanism for investigating complaints, strict enforcement and stiff penalties — is required to keep everyone on the straight and narrow. And such a system has to be impartially administered, since the instinctive reaction of every public official caught with his hand in the cookie jar is to scream that he’s the victim of a politically motivated attack.

The ethical codes and oversight bodies for Maine judges and attorneys, probably the toughest of any in the state of Maine, could serve as a model for executive branch employees, whether appointed by the governor or department heads or elected by the Legislature.

Unless and until such a system comes into existence, however, Poliquin should be setting an example for the kind of high ethical standards and responsible conduct he and other LePage officials stridently demanded of the former executive directors of the State Highway Commission and Maine Housing Authority.

If Poliquin wants to talk the talk, he has to walk the walk.

Elliott L. Epstein, a local attorney, is founder of Museum L-A and an adjunct history instructor at Central Maine Community College. He is the author of “Lucifer’s Child,”a recently published book about the 1984 oven-death murder of Angela Palmer.He may be reached at [email protected].