The fines from the state Ethics Commission usually hits a high of a few thousand dollars in the case of the most egregious, flagrant and unapologetic of conflict-of-interest violations.

And that’s when someone is being super-obviously sketchy to the 100th degree.

But that’s not what the Board of Aldermen is doing in trying to figure out if it can weigh in –and maybe even actually vote- on a residents’ petition asking the city to direct its retirement board to divest of any current holdings, directly or through pension investment funds, tied to the fossil-fuel industry. The other logical request is the city ensures any future investments do not have a tie to that industry in the interest of the environment and all that good stuff.

The arguments against allowing the board to discuss (and much less vote) on the matter are pretty straight forward: Board members are part of the pension system, so they therefore would have a conflict if they fiddled with what funds were invested where.

But would that be so sketchy?

The SPIRIT of the law (and of the Ethics Commission itself) is to punish people (or, in more minor cases, to reprimand them) for using their role as elected officials to benefit themselves and/or their family members and friends.

Aside from the more philosophical and abstract argument that the BOA, if they voted in favor (and were able to order the Retirement Board to bend to their will) of divesting from fossil-fuel-related stocks would, in fact, benefit their friends and family members insomuch as those friends and family members lived on the planet, there is not much to suggest board members would be violating conflict-of-interest statutes in voting for a change to investment protocols that would neither fatalistically profit or bankrupt the pension system.

The city solicitor deserves great credit for thinking to even research the issue, whereas other municipalities moving forward with the same idea have not. Sometimes people (and even cities and towns) don’t want to ask a question because they suspect (with good reason) what the answer may be.

Somerville did not. It asked and got an answer. And now that the answer appears to be “No,” the city, through the BOA, should volley it back and ask not only “Why not?” but also “What are you gonna do?”