Is this how you curb government intrusion?

     Commissioner Robin Frazier wants to make anyone receiving any kind of help through human services programs work for their keep. She calls such mandatory labor "volunteer service."
     I am not surprised at her request. She has a track record for shallow self-righteousness and hypocrisy.  I am only surprised that her colleagues did not immediately rule it out.
    For one thing, its not county business; it is state and/or federal policy that decides eligibility.  The only authority the commissioners have is for the level of funding. For another, this is the board that campaigned on the premise that government should be less overreaching, less intrusive. Perhaps they meant only less intrusive into the lives of people like them; less needy, financially and physically well off. There is the hypocrisy, and it can be contagious.
     But gone are the quality people who would advise commissioners that some things are not within their domain of influence. Or perhaps such advice was offered by current legal and administrative staff, but was overridden on ideological grounds.
     The board as a whole did better on the issue of a master plan. Dave Roush, who has a reputation for being thoughtful, if occasionally condescending or sarcastic, finally got quoted in print for standing up to some of the silliness of Richard Rothschild's paranoic rants about world domination of local planning and zoning.
     Still, the tenor of the slide presentation presented by Rothschild and Frazier ignores the intent of Maryland law, which is that an independent board of citizens, comprising a planning and zoning commission, draw up a master plan for growth and land use. In other words, the people, as represented by those on the planning commission, not the politicians,  make the recommendations. The commissioners can only approve or disapprove the plan. If they disapprove of the people's plan, they have to send it back to the planning commission for review and possible revision and resubmission for approval.
     This board of commissioners, in two separate actions this past week, demonstrated that it is willing to overreach when it serves its' agenda, and is not truly a defender of less intrusive government.