... according to state officials

That's us - "state officials."  It's such a generic and disembodied term.
It's a bland face in a grey suit.
It's some vague embodiment of authority.
It's 'them.'

It's hard to grasp that I am now one of them, that the tag now belngs to me.
But there it is, on the front page
of both our local papers: Observatory faces fine for lack of permits
and Agency seeks fine against observatory.

Dawn Hegger - former schoolmate and housemate, upholder of the law against those bad federales, and fellow Durpie - sits five feet from me.

The fact that both our local papers ran an important local story verbatim from the AP wire is another issue.