The saga of Jim West moved closer to the final chapter Thursday when a U.S. Justice Department official announced that the FBI found no grounds for charging the former Spokane mayor with corruption.

That news understandably set well with West, who, in a press conference later that day, reacted as though the past nine months’ controversy hinged on whether he was guilty of a crime. Actually, a lawyer appointed by the city has concluded that West’s computer-aided relationships did violate state and local laws, but that was not the realm investigated by the FBI. It will be up to state and local authorities to decide if their agencies take further action.

But criminal conduct, or the lack of it, is not the issue that brought West’s tenure as mayor, and in all likelihood his political career, to an abrupt halt. The real concern – and it’s one of tragic proportions – is the way West squandered his leadership opportunities to gratify his personal interests, breaking his compact with the public in the process.

On that charge, the people themselves rendered a decisive verdict in December when they removed him from office in a recall vote that captured 65 percent of the ballots.

It was a sad end to what previously qualified as a commendable political record. The disclosure May 5 of his disreputable actions while seeking young men in online computer chat rooms – some of them not even born by the time his political career was well on its way – posed difficult tests of loyalty for many of West’s political allies and admirers. Just how forgiving were they expected to be?

What if it had been their son or daughter West was chatting with when he told a computer expert posing as a 17-year-old, “I’m not sure how I would handle your father … or your mother”?

Many upstanding Spokane people properly understood that honor is not a currency that entitles you to save it up one day and spend it on tawdry adventures the next. But others supported West through the ordeal, possibly because of the political skill he brought to city policy-setting and the decorum he had begun to restore in a City Hall that staggered through several years of rancor and drift.

Which makes the ex-mayor’s comments on Thursday all the more disheartening. That he would fail to accept full accountability for his actions is unsurprising. That’s been his pattern. Likewise, it wasn’t the first time for him to lash out at reporters and editors. It’s common for public officials whose inappropriateness has been unmasked to denounce those bringing it to light.

What was disappointing, however, was West’s utterly unfair attempt to malign his successor, Mayor Dennis Hession. It was Hession’s task to still the chaos that hampered City Hall in the weeks after the story broke. It was also Hession’s job to help hire a lawyer to explore whether West’s use of city property broke any laws.

West implied that Hession, then council president, had political gain on his mind in the choice of Bellevue attorney Mark Busto to conduct the City Council’s investigation. The suggestion is groundless and unfair to both Hession and Busto.

The irony here is that West, like Hession, tried to ease the tension at City Hall and foster a climate of civility. It only lessens his steadily dimming image to abandon that goal now.