Note: Brief update added below, 5/17, 12 noon.

On April 5, Governor Shumlin held a big splashy news conference to announce that the state had sold 25,000 “Vermont Strong” license plates — halfway toward its goal of 50,000. It was an authentic feel-good moment for the Administration and for Irene recovery efforts, which are the major beneficiaries of plate sales.

Little problem: 25,000 was the number produced, not the number sold. The Vermont Press Bureau* took the bold step of asking the DMV for sales figures, and the number turned out to be less than 8,000.

I take three things away from this. The most prominent and least important: major, major PR screwup for the Governor. When you’re making such a highly-touted announcement, you’d better have your facts straight. This is the kind of process/detail stuff that Shumlin is usually good at. Not this time.

The second lesson, second most important: the Governor went out on a limb with this program, as VPB reported (article behind the Herald/T-A paywall)…

Lawmakers didn’t learn of the plan until the governor unveiled it in his [State of the State] address, and many felt he’d undercut the legislative process by doing so.

At the time, this was poor form and created a bit of executive/legislative tension for no good reason. Now that the program is falling far short of expectations, Shumlin doesn’t just look impolitic — he also looks wrong on the merits of “Vermont Strong” itself. That erodes his credibility.

After the jump: A big opportunity squandered.

The third lesson, and most important, is that “Vermont Strong” looks like a major bust for Irene recovery. Of the $25 price of each plate, $18 goes to the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund and $2 to the state food bank. Those causes have received a little less than $200,000 so far, which is obviously far short of the $1 million goal. What’s worse is that the state has already spent $136,000 to manufacture 28,000 plates. So the net revenue from the project is a little more than $60,000. (Note: The relief agencies have received their full share of the proceeds so far. The DMV is more than $100,000 in the hole, having paid the full production costs for 28,000 plates.)

Shumlin announced “Vermont Strong” four months ago, so the program has presumably lost momentum. Sales are only about 16% of the projected goal. It’s hard to imagine the kind of dramatic, sustained surge it would take to get anywhere near the goal. And, as Prog/Dem Senator Tim Ashe told the VPB…

“Financially, the plates may have prevented us from really considering more substantial opportunities to help our neighbors,” Ashe said. “For example, if every person this year on their has bill was asked to pay $1 to go into the fund… we would have raised a lot more money than this license plate program.”

And that, rather than last month’s PR screwup, is the real shame of this story.

Update: At least one person realized Shumlin’s mistake immediately, at the April 5 newser: DMC Commissioner Robert Ide, according to the Burlington Free Press:

I’m rather astounded by that. Ide goes on to explain that “we were selling them fast,” so I guess he thought reality would catch up with the announcement. Which, turns out, was a gross miscalculation on his part. I wonder if anyone else noticed the discrepancy and didn’t say anything about it.