If you spend any amount of time in Tallahassee, you’ll hear ranting about top-down government.

Legislators hate when Washington tells them what to do, arguing that one government should never make mandates for the other.

Unless they’re the ones doing the mandating, that is.

A classic example came two years ago when legislators proposed new term limits — not for themselves, mind you — but for city councils and county commissions across the state.

Washington needed to stop messing with Tallahassee … but Tallahassee was fine messing with everybody else.

Now we have another example of Tallahassee trying to control local communities — with sick time.

On Friday, Gov. Rick Scott signed into law a bill preventing local communities from passing their own laws regarding mandatory sick time.

It’s the continuation of a troubling trend where state legislators try to usurp local laws and block communities from controlling their own destinies.

We’ve seen it with gun laws. We see it now with sick time. Odds are you’ll see it again the next time Tallahassee thinks it knows better than you yokels in the hinterlands.

And you don’t have to give a flip about sick time to be concerned about that.

Click here for the Orlando Sentinel Op-Ed

Scott Maxwell: On sick time, legislative hypocrisy abounds
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