An unacceptable overstep of authority occurred at last week’s Butler County commissioners meeting.

Margaret Abersold, adminstrative assistant to Commissioner Jim Eckstein, stood at the visitors’ podium and delivered a three-minute verbal assault against majority commissioners Bill McCarrier and Dale Pinkerton over their intent to privatize the Sunnyview Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.

Abersold said she was speaking on behalf of Eckstein, the board’s minority Democrat. She spoke at the start of the meeting, during time allotted for public comment on agenda items.

The maneuver was unacceptable on several levels.

First, Eckstein admitted later in the meeting that he’d pressed Abersold to speak for him as a way to skirt the time limits imposed on all speakers at commission meetings and “to dispense more information about Sunnyview.”

Ironically, Eckstein then used his bonus speaking time to call McCarrier and Pinkerton the “county king and jester;” he called them “mean, old party-boss throwbacks from the ’60s” and he called their supporters “cronies” and “bottom feeders.” — name-calling that fails miserably in supporting Eckstein’s contention he should get more time to speak.

Second, there’s no place in a public setting for county employees to express personal opinions while working on company time. Should public school teachers preach their own political or religious views in the classroom, while on the taxpayer’s time? It’s the same thing.

Finally, Abersold (or Eckstein using Abersold) said nothing new. It’s just more of the same spew of half-truth arguments and personal attacks that privatizing Sunnyview amounts to destroying it and throwing patients out in the street. Eckstein knows this isn’t true, and his rhetoric keeps the patients he professes to love in a state of constant worry. It appears he must believe their fears increase his political stock.

Eckstein contends further that the county turned its back on a union offer of $1 million in givebacks when the union has known all along that, since their offer was made after the fact, they will never have to fulfill it. Their offer is window dressing, and it’s a stale argument.

Article 9 of the county policy on public comment at board meetings is very clear. It states the chairman “shall maintain order in all matters during public comment” and that “no personal attacks on the character or reputation of county employees, department heads or any official will be tolerated.”

In our view, Chairman McCarrier has been tolerant to a fault about letting the opposition be heard.

But Eckstein and Abersold’s gambit steps beyond the bounds of toleration. It should not be allowed to happen again.