In October, when questions were swirling about Cylvia Hayes and her dual roles as private businesswoman and trusted adviser to Gov. John Kitzhaber, the governor made Oregonians a promise.

He had asked the Oregon Ethics Commission to give an opinion on whether handling of those dual roles was a violation of state government ethics rules. And until that opinion was given, he said, Hayes would be gone from the governor’s office, where she had been working without pay.

Friday, the ethics commission declined to give an opinion on Kitzhaber’s questions.

It did so, its executive director said, because it can give opinions, as opposed to rulings, only about hypothetical problems. The governor’s questions were not hypothetical and thus were beyond the commission’s charge.

The commission’s staff, meanwhile, is reviewing two separate formal complaints about Hayes’ role in advance of the commission’s decision about whether they should be formally investigated.

Neither Kitzhaber nor Hayes should use the commission’s failure to give its opinion on Kitzhaber’s questions as a license to allow her back into the governor’s office. Nor should decisions about the two complaints, if investigations into them go forward, persuade them to return her to her unofficial post.

She is not, after all, a state employee or an elected official. She is the governor’s fianc ee and no doubt a person whose opinion he values. But for too long, she and the governor have overlooked or ignored one very important thing:

Perceptions count, at least as much as reality. And where the governor and Hayes are concerned, public perceptions do them no favors.

If Kitzhaber hopes to leave office with the sort of reputation we suspect he wants, Hayes can have no personal space in the governor’s office or even the most limited assistance from any member of his staff. She cannot act as friendly intermediary between her former business friends and the governor, no matter how casually.

Rather, she must, like Caesar’s wife, be above suspicion, and in this case that comes only with a high wall between Hayes and the official State of Oregon.