Sometimes a story comes down to a single word.
“Inhale” is one that comes to mind, a la Bill Clinton.
In this case, the word in question is “sold” vs. “distributed,” “produced” or “manufactured.”
Last week Peter Hirschfeld of the Vermont Press Bureau reported that Gov. Peter Shumlin erroneously claimed the state had sold 25,000 Vermont Strong license plates at a press conference last month. (Governor’s office press release.)
What’s in 25,000 plates? For the Shumlin administration a potential credibility gap with the public — and for his political enemies a stick to beat him with in the upcoming campaign season.
Not to mention the potential sullying of a good cause.
The WCAX account made it appear that Shumlin was overstating the case and grabbing headlines.
Previous gaffes helped to make the story stick. Shumlin once mistakenly claimed that 30 percent of Germany’s energy came from solar power (it’s actually 1 percent), and he said in his 2012 state budget address that the job growth rate in Vermont grew by 62 percent over the prior year. The figure Shumlin used actually referred to the percentage increase in job openings.
But was Shumlin engaging in hyperbolic politispeak in this instance? Sources say there could be a political undercurrent at work here — since the story was shopped around to at least three reporters.
Let’s recap.
The April 5 announcement was part of a dog and pony show, in which Rob Ide, the commissioner of the Department of Motor Vehicles, handed Shumlin the 25,000th plate. The governor duly purchased and donated the Vermont Strong plate to a Barre firefighter.
Trouble was, 25,000 plates hadn’t actually been sold. And since this is a story about parsing the parsing, let’s just say that money had not yet changed hands.
Thousands of plates had been distributed to area grocery stores, Vermont Life and Department of Motor Vehicle outlets around the state, and in some cases bills had been issued, but the fact was money wasn’t exactly pouring in to benefit the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund and the Vermont Foodbank.
The bottom line? Money had been collected for 7,832 plates as of May 15, according to Glen Button, deputy commissioner of the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles, and the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund had received $140,976 and the food bank $15,664. The objective is to sell 50,000 plates in all for a total of $1.25 million — $1 million of which would go to Irene victims. So far, about 28,000 have been manufactured.
On May 7, a week before the Vermont Press Bureau story broke, Ide told VTDigger that as far as he was concerned the plates were as good as sold. The department had distributed 9,990 plates to large vendors like Shaw’s, Price Chopper and Hannafords. At that point, he said, the department had billed out $327,500 to vendors.
“If we give them an invoice,” Ide said. “In my book I’ve sold them.”
A week later, Ide, who helped to plan the celebratory presser with Shumlin’s press secretary Sue Allen, said “we miscommunicated.” Ide meant to say that 25,000 had been manufactured and put into the distribution stream — not sold.
Email, he said, is not his best form of communication. Ide apparently didn’t interpret the email from Allen with the subject line “Any chance we could sell the 25,000 license plate on Thursday?” the same way she did. But in a previous email he named a date and exact time for when the 25,000th plate would be sold: 11:18 a.m. on April 4.
“It is what it is,” Ide said. “It was clearly a miscommunication, and I’m very apologetic about that.”
Who is at fault here? No one, according to Allen. In an interview, she called it “an honest mistake.”
“The governor’s been very candid,” Allen said. “When things go right, he gets all credit. When things go wrong he gets blame. It was a mistake and we’re sorry.”
Ditto, Alex MacLean, Shumlin’s campaign manager and secretary of Civil and Military Affairs: “I’m not going to point fingers.”
Chris Graff, an executive with National Life Insurance Group and a member of the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund board, says the story was a tempest in a teapot. What really matters is ensuring that the state continues to sell as many plates as possible for Irene victims.
“We were disappointed to see we hadn’t sold 25,000 plates, but I know that the event itself was done in good faith that the governor and everyone in the office truly thought the 25,000th plate was being sold because they contacted us,” Graff said.
Graff said it was an embarrassment for the administration and “it’s on something you don’t want to really affect.”
“We need to do everything possible to raise money for Irene survivors and the administration feels that sharply,” Graff said. “They have been incredibly aologetic for this mistake.”
Allen couldn’t agree more. “We just want people to go out and buy the plates,” she said. “They don’t just mean financial assistance for Irene victims, they are a reminder to people who are still trying to recover.”
Meanwhile, the Department of Motor Vehicles is waiting for sales to catch up with inventory. Ide says the manufacture of new Vermont Strong plates has been put on hold until the state moves more of the roughly 20,000 plates it has on hand.
