Jim Eckstein claims the county owes him $144,788, the legal costs he incurred defending his honor in a defamation case.

Eckstein, who was a Butler County commissioner from 2012 through 2015, says the county must pay his lawyer bills because Eckstein was acting in his role as commissioner — even though it was a fellow commissioner, Dale Pinkerton, suing Eckstein for defaming him. And Eckstein maintains the county should pay his costs even though he settled out of court, paying Pinkerton and two other plaintiffs a total of $6,000 to drop their case. A first trial ended in a mistrial.

Pinkerton and other plaintiffs — county human resources director Lori Altman and her husband, state Trooper Scott Altman — alleged Eckstein spread a rumor that Pinkerton traded Lori Altman an extra 20 percent pay hike in 2011 in exchange for getting out of a drunken driving stop. None of that was true, the state attorney general's office and state police determined.

The crux of Eckstein's claim is that he was acting as county commissioner when he made any statement that might have suggested a Pinkerton-Altman quid pro quo. He claims he told people only that there was an attorney general's office investigation occurring, not that anyone was guilty of corruption — and that if the county argues he was not acting as a commissioner, it would not be a defensible stance.

On closer examination, Eckstein's argument falls flat on its face. He was not acting as a commissioner.

A county commissioner — even a minority commissioner dealing with a hostile majority, as Eckstein certainly was — does not conduct business by gossip or innuendo. He attends meetings, builds the agenda and debates the issues in public. Even a majority commissioner has the authority of the electorate as well as the political party he or she represents.

There's also the moral imperative inherent in every issue. If there might have been a shred of truth in the rumors that sparked the investigations, then the investigations and the discussions would have been justified. But in this case, did the discussions conceive the investigations? Were we chasing rumors from the start? The evidence — lack of evidence, to be precise — indicates so.

In the trial eight months ago that ended in a mistrial, Eckstein testified that he had incurred about $50,000 in legal fees to that point, and that he would attempt to recoup that money from the county if he prevailed in that trial.

Eckstein did not prevail in the trial, and he paid to settle out of court before the retrial could occur. Now he's trying to recoup his money from the county taxpayers., and call his non-loss a win.

So, which is it? Eckstein wants the county to finance a fight he wouldn't finish. If he was so sure of his case; and he remains certain the county is responsible for his legal expenses, then why didn't he continue his fight to the bitter end? Why did he back away from the retrial and settle?

The answer: Eckstein himself did not believe he had a valid claim. He still doesn't.