BERKELEY — In a move that ethicists call fraught with conflicts and cronyism, a City Council member who voted to give Berkeley police Chief Michael Meehan a $500,000 housing loan from public funds later worked as his real estate agent and took a commission on the chief’s purchase of a home, records show.

Councilman Lawrence Capitelli said he split the nearly $30,000 commission on the $1.185 million sale with another agent in his office at Red Oak Realty, where he was a partner. The firm also took a cut of the commission. Capitelli’s questionable role in the 2010 home sale came to light this week after the Bay Area News Group published a story Sunday that showed how at least 33 local governments use taxpayer funds to help top public officials pay for housing.

A member of the Berkeley City Council since 2004, Capitelli insists he did nothing wrong by representing Meehan after the council voted in November 2009 to loan the chief $500,000, because the two hadn’t discussed representation at the time of the vote.

“I had no clue I’d be representing him” when the loan was approved, said Capitelli, 69, who is contemplating running for mayor next year. “He came to me months later.”

However, one of his council colleagues who also voted for the loan was shocked to learn this week that Capitelli later worked for Meehan.

“No way!” said Councilman Kriss Worthington. “It is almost inconceivable. It’s just slimy and unethical. It cheapens the office” of council member.

Meehan, 54, wrote in a statement to this newspaper that the loan “has helped me as a chief to live in the city where I work and where my children attend public schools.”

In an email, he told this newspaper that the person who shared the commission with Capitelli was his agent in the deal. But Capitelli confirmed he did the work and lists the house on his web page as one he helped the buyer purchase. Real estate documents also identify him as Meehan’s agent.

Capitelli said city lawyers told him representing Meehan wouldn’t violate state conflict of interest rules, because they had no representation agreement prior to the loan vote.

But experts in government ethics said both Meehan and Capitelli made errors in judgment and violated the public’s trust.

“There are plenty of people who have followed the-so called letter of the law and have still done things that are unethical,” said Judy Nadler, a former Santa Clara mayor and retired professor of ethics at Santa Clara University.

Capitelli “can say he didn’t know” he’d be working for Meehan when he voted, but he still “took the job and benefited from it,” Nadler said. “It raises lots of questions about fairness and cronyism. Why wouldn’t the chief have picked another agent?”

It is obvious that Capitelli “shouldn’t have taken” Meehan as a client, said Jessica Levinson, a Loyola University law professor and the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission’s president. “His vote ended up financially benefiting him.”

Capitelli’s justification is “baloney,” said Jon Coupal, head of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers’ Association, a critic of taxpayer-funded home loans to government employees. The work was “a clear conflict of interest,” said Coupal.

In late June 2010, Meehan closed on a four-bedroom house in the tony north Berkeley neighborhood of Thousand Oaks, paying $90,000 above list price. Records show he combined the city loan, which has a 3 percent interest rate, with two private mortgages for the purchase.

His tenure since then has led to criticisms. In 2012, he ordered an officer to go to the home of a reporter for this newspaper in the middle of the night to demand changes to a story posted online about a public meeting at which residents were critical of the department’s response to the killing of an elderly resident by a homeless man.

Meehan later apologized. That same year, the chief sent 10 cops to chase down his teenage son’s stolen smartphone. That search spilled over into neighboring Oakland, where officers conducted a house-by-house search. No police report was filed on the matter. The phone wasn’t found. Meehan denied his son received preferential treatment.

Now, revelations of his real estate tie to Capitelli appear to add to the list of controversies. Worthington said the questionable business relationship shows that Berkeley needs a tough local ethics law.

“This type of thing needs to be illegal,” he said. “It’s just unbelievable.”

Follow Thomas Peele at Twitter.com/thomas_peele.