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For tomorrow, we're working on an editorial about a display of good government in Christiansburg. As noted in a recent blog post, earlier this week Christiansburg Town Councilman Henry Showalter sent out an e-mail asking whether two of his colleagues had a conflict of interest regarding an item on the agenda for Tuesday's meeting.

The agenda item was a rezoning request for land on Peppers Ferry Road at the end of Sage Lane that would allow more residential development in an area where the roads already have difficulty handling existing traffic.

Showalter wondered if fellow council members Jim Vanhoozier and Brad Stipes should recuse themselves from the then-upcoming vote because both are members of a church negotiating a right-of-way agreement with the developer seeking the rezoning.

The men checked with the town's attorneys, who said that a recusal wasn't legally necessary. But both council members decided that, legally necessary or not, they would recuse themselves in the interest of avoiding even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

This is a nice example, especially compared to others we can think of where elected officials failed to recuse themselves even when a conflict of interest was clear, even if it wasn't a technical violation of the law.