As we reported in Fizz this morning, City Council president Richard Conlin changed a blog post he had written about the tunnel referendum. Since then, we've spoken to Conlin to find out why; he said he was concerned that it might violate the city's ethics rules around using official city web sites for campaign purposes.

Originally, the post included the following sentence:

The judge’s ruling was on a referendum petition asking that the whole ordinance be placed on the ballot.  A coalition of organizations led by Mayor McGinn paid a signature gathering firm $58,000 to gather 19,000 valid signatures.  The judge agreed with City Attorney Pete Holmes that this ordinance and the three agreements were not subject to referendum.

And it concluded with the following sentence:

It is not clear what the vote on this ballot measure would actually do, but it clearly would not either stop or advance the tunnel project.

As of yesterday, the first sentence had been replaced with the following:

The judge’s ruling was on a referendum petition asking that the whole ordinance be placed on the ballot.  The judge agreed with City Attorney Pete Holmes that this ordinance and the three agreements were not subject to referendum.

And the final sentence now reads:

There are a variety of opinions as to what the outcome of this vote would actually mean.

Why the changes? The post said it had been updated "to ensure compliance with the City's ethical standards for the use of City resources when communicating about ballot issues."

Contacted by phone this morning, Conlin said he had changed the post after "a question was raised as to whether or not that might be considered campaigning" against the referendum. Conlin said he changed the post on his own and was not asked to do so by the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission.