"This is Machiavellian!!"    That's your State government, W in S ... a government by the Bureaucrats, of the Bureaucrats, and for the Bureaucrats.  

The rest of us officially belong to the helot underclass, despised and derided by our public-sector overseers.  We are not a 'public to be 
served', but just beasts of burden - sheep to be shorn, goats to be milked.  :-/