When did City Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young decide that his cousin's job in the beverage industry constituted a conflict of interest on the proposed bottle tax? Was it just before he recused himself from the vote Thursday, or was it before he stood on the steps of City Hall to announce his opposition to the measure in May? Or at any point since its introduction in April, when his office argued against it?

City ethics law did not require Mr. Young to recuse himself from the vote, the highest-profile and most heavily lobbied element of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's effort to resolve a budget gap, which died Thursday on a 7-7 tie vote. The city code defines potential conflicts of interest as those involving a spouse, child, parent or sibling, not a cousin. But Mr. Young announced this week that he considered his relationship with his cousin sufficiently close that he could not, within the bounds of his own conception of ethics, vote on the matter.

The council president has every right to set a higher standard for himself than the law requires, but his application of that standard has been uneven. Ultimately, whether Mr. Young voted against the bill or recused himself Thursday did not matter — either would have resulted in the bill's failure. But his actions before then might have made a difference. Mr. Young was among the council members who publicly announced their opposition to the bill in late May, and his participation in that event was enough to demonstrate that a majority of the council opposed the legislation. He was a key architect of efforts to craft an alternative revenue package, and his staff argued forcefully that the bottle tax would be a bad idea.

The city ethics code doesn't limit its restrictions of elected officials' activities in cases of conflict of interest to voting on matters. It prohibits them from participating in any matter in which they have a conflict. Mr. Young may have recused himself from voting on the bottle tax, but he certainly participated in the opposition.

Mr. Young is not the only council member for whom the bottle tax raised questions of conflict. Council Vice President Edward Reisinger was initially concerned about whether he could vote on the bottle tax because he owns an interest in a family bar. He sought and received an opinion from the city's law department. It concluded that because the tax was on beverage distributors, not retailers, Mr. Reisinger was not required to recuse himself. He voted for the bottle tax.

The case of Councilwoman Sharon Green Middleton is thornier. She is the wife of Glennard Middleton, the head of the local branch of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which lobbied extensively in support of the bottle tax on the grounds that it would save city government jobs. Mr. Middleton's role presents some degree of conflict in virtually anything Councilwoman Middleton might do — after all, virtually any action of the council has some effect, direct or indirect, on city workers. In this instance, the potential conflict was more direct than most, and a good case could be made that she should have recused herself. She voted in favor of the tax. In her defense, her potential conflict is clear, and it is well known both to her colleagues and to the voters who put her in office.

Although council members say Mr. Young told them about his ethical concern shortly after the bottle tax was introduced, the precise nature of his potential conflict is less clear. According to a spokesman for the council president, Mr. Young's cousin was part of a meeting early on in the debate in which the beverage industry lobbied against the tax. The spokesman did not know whether the cousin's job primarily consisted of lobbying, whether he was just brought in to this meeting in hopes of swaying the council president, or whether he is a registered lobbyist with the city. If the relationship was close enough to constitute a conflict, one would think the answers to these questions would be known.

That said, there is nothing wrong with Mr. Young acting out of an abundance of caution. He just should have exercised that caution during the 10 weeks when opinions about the bottle tax were being formed on the council and in the public, not merely on the night of the vote, when the result was a foregone conclusion.