The city Ethics Commission’s stated purpose “is to improve and maintain public confidence in government officials and employees.”

Commissioners are doing the opposite with their clumsy and secretive mugging of longtime Executive Director Chuck Totto, breeding distrust about the actions and motives of city officials — starting with themselves.

Since mid-2015, the commission has been mired in distraction as new members appointed by Mayor Kirk Caldwell first tried to muzzle Totto and now seem intent on firing him.

Caldwell has had it in for Totto since he raised ethical questions about the mayor’s 2013 inaugural luau, which was financed with $400,000 from private donors, many of whom had major business before the city.

Caldwell’s minions have since squeezed the Ethics Commission’s budget, attempted to limit the commission’s authority, issued competing ethics rulings and stonewalled investigations of ethical lapses by city employees.

It seems no coincidence the commission, whose support Totto previously enjoyed, began targeting him after Caldwell gained a controlling bloc with his appointment of three former judges — Victoria Marks, Riki May Amano and Allene Suemori.

The discord became public after Totto questioned the validity of City Council votes on rail that were taken after Council members accepted substantial undisclosed gifts from rail interests.

Totto’s concerns were consistent with past rulings by the Ethics Commission and the courts.

And they mirrored public concerns about a deficit-ridden rail project that had been rubber-stamped by Council members influenced by rail lobbyists dishing out expensive food, drink, golf and other gratuities.

But ethical questions about rail rankled Caldwell heading into an election year, and his corporation counsel, Donna Leong, challenged Totto’s authority to raise such issues publicly.

With Leong’s support, ethics commissioners led by the mayor’s three former judges moved to gag Totto with an unprecedented policy that barred him from talking to the media without the commission’s approval.

Forced to back off after a public outcry, the commission now is apparently moving on Totto’s job; he’s been placed on leave while commissioners investigate behind closed doors “an internal complaint regarding the management of the commission’s staff and personnel.”

Caldwell’s grudge against Totto seems over the top, given that he hasn’t been entirely unfriendly to the mayor; it was Totto’s favorable advisory that gave Caldwell an ethical fig leaf to cover his side work as a Territorial Bancorp Inc. director, which pays him $200,000 to $299,000 a year.

It’s unbecoming for the former judges to come off looking like political enforcers.

They’re not wearing black robes, wielding gavels and operating in the imperious world of the judiciary anymore.

They’re supposed to be the public face of honest and ethical city government, and they’ll never inspire confidence by slinking around backrooms and stifling discussion of ethical transgressions instead of aggressively rooting them out.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com or blog.volcanicash.net.