It’s been a bizarre week or so in Vermont politics, as Our Esteemed Leaders have just been falling all over each other trying not to address the imminent unsheltering of hundreds of Vermonters. (Which will happen on Thursday for those keeping track of such things.) They’re far more interested in positioning themselves and shifting blame than in crafting a humane and eminently doable way out of this mess.

Thursday is the day when some 800 households will lose eligibility for the motel voucher program that’s being allowed to expire for no good reason except, well, as Gov. Phil Scott likes to say, “It’s time.” Another 1,000 or so households will lose their places on July 1 or 29, depending.

The uncertainty stems from the governor’s deft sidestepping of the Democrats’ obvious ploy to trick him into signing the budget (spoiler alert: he vetoed the thing). In so doing, he managed to position himself to the left of the Democrats by allowing a ridiculous 28-day extension for some voucher clients. But not the ones about to lose their accommodations next week, no sirree Bob. The governor’s shift, which flies in the face of his previous insistence that the voucher program just absolutely had to end on schedule, was so hastily put together that this was how VTDigger summarized its impact:

It’s unclear how many people will receive the extra month of shelter. An actual breakdown was not available from state officials on Friday…

To put it another way, it’s just the latest Phil Scott clusterfuck on emergency housing. And yet, he’s in position to look like a hero — relatively speaking — not only for this inadequate extension, but also for the administration’s apparently precipitous issuance of an RFP for creation and staffing of up to 1,000 emergency shelter beds. The Democrats have no one but themselves to blame for their predicament.

Which leads us to the sad figure pictured above: former deputy secretary of state Chris Winters, seen here realizing that his soul is in a sealed jar on Jason Gibbs’ desk.

Winters came very close to being one of the Vermont Democratic Party’s top elected officials, but he was pipped at the primary post by former state rep Sarah Copeland Hanzas. And a guy’s gotta eat, so in February he accepted the commissionership of the Department of Children and Families, for which he was qualified I’m not exactly sure how. (He’d spent a quarter century in the relatively compact Secretary of State’s office, which doesn’t sound like ideal preparation for managing a large and oft-troubled bureaucracy.)

And boy, did he stick his foot in it last week. In announcing the RFP issued on Wednesday, Winters essentially admitted the administration’s failure to plan ahead. He blamed it on his old (and perhaps now former) friends in the Legislature:

Everybody was talking about it coming to an end and then pushing it out for another three months, or another six months, or pushing it out for another year. And so there’s never been, you know, this inflection point of OK, it’s really ending right?

Oh, there’s so much wrong in that brief statement, but let’s proceed to its consequences, which presumably included a quick trip to the woodshed. On Friday, under Scott’s watchful eye, Winters desperately tried to undo his own mess.

“As the brand-new commissioner of (Department for Children and Families), I’ve had to come up to speed rather quickly on a number of issues — this one being first and foremost,” Chris Winters said at a press conference held at the governor’s office Friday. “I think there’s a bit of a misperception out there that the department or the state in general, has not been planning, has not been working on this issue. And I can tell you, there’s nothing further from the truth.”

“A bit of a misperception” fueled by the administration’s sudden, smell-of-desperation actions this week, and by Winters’ own words!

That RFP, meanwhile, has many (including Yours Truly) muttering the accursed name “CoreCivic.” There aren’t many enterprises capable of bidding for a very large project like building and managing 1,000 shelter spaces. Ain’t nobody in Vermont capable of doing it. But there’s CoreCivic, which has been diversifying beyond prison operation as that market has reached the saturation point.

According to its own website, it doesn’t just operate prisons, it also provides detention “solutions that meet government’s civil and criminal detention management needs with safe facilities that also meet the unique needs of those in our care.” The latter half of that sentence could easily be interpreted to jibe with the vaguely-defined remit of the Scott administration’s brand spanking new RFP. Elsewhere, CoreCivic describes itself as a provider of “real estate solutions” with “decades of experience in the design, construction, and financing of government real estate projects.”

Hmmm boy, that sure sounds like an outfit that could put in a bid for this suddenly available contract that’s sure to be awarded with a minimum of oversight and review. Because, you know, we have to help the unhoused! Right now!

By putting them into a 1,000-bed secure facility managed by those wonderful folks who brought you private prison scandals across the country. I wonder if the, um, inmates will have to wear orange jumpsuits.

The governor’s eager desire to have CoreCivic build — and lease to the state — a megaprison “campus” has been thwarted by the Legislature’s reluctance to let the fox design, build and manage the henhouse. But let’s say, just thinking out loud, CoreCivic can present itself as the “solution” to our self-inflicted epidemic of homelessness? Will the Legislature be able to resist that sales pitch?

There is more, much much more, soooooo much more to be said about the inadequate response and craven self-positioning of our political class. There are a few heroes, including the 17 state representatives still promising to vote against a veto override of the state budget unless it includes a solid plan to avoid unhousing thousands of Vermonters. But for the most part, our leaders are failing us. Spectacularly.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. A thousand or so Vermonters only have four more nights in their motel rooms. Our leaders are failing to meet the challenge, and embarrassing themselves in the process. Plenty of room in the Hall of Shame.