Legislative leadership has a somewhat (but only somewhat) overblown reputation for shooting themselves in the foot. They have often made Gov. Phil Scott’s job easier by giving him pain-free victories or allowing his minions to run rings around them.

The latest installment of this depressing melodrama features the complaint from House Speaker Jill Krowinski and Senate President Pro Tem Phil Baruth about the “Vermont Strong II: Electric Boogaloo” license plates first suggested [checks notes] almost two months ago by Gov. Phil Scott.

Now, I’m no fan of the plate. It’s an obvious play on Vermonters’ partially earned self-regard, and there’s something ironic about flogging vehicle license plates to help recover from a climate change-related disaster.

Also, Baruth and Krowinski have a strong argument that the governor overstepped his constitutional authority by advancing the program without Legislative approval. Team Scott argues that he is simply extending a program authorized by the Legislature in 2012, after Tropical Storm Irene.

That seems pretty thin to me, but politically speaking it doesn’t matter. There is no way that this doesn’t end up being a strong net positive for Scott. Assuming he runs for re-election, this thing would be potent fodder for the TV ads he probably won’t have to bother airing: “Legislative leaders are so petty and obstructionist, they didn’t even want me to raise disaster recovery money with a positive, feel-good message.”

Team Scott fully realizes this. And when you look at the sequence of events, it’s pretty clear that his people leaked this story and that Baruth and Krowinski didn’t intend for this to become public.

The leaders first expressed their concerns to the Scott administration way back on July 21, only a couple of days after the governor first mentioned the idea. They sent another letter on August 2. They didn’t take their concerns public. And the administration didn’t bother to respond.

Baruth and Krowinski tried again on August 30. That letter was first reported by VTDigger on September 8, which means that (a) the leaders didn’t do anything to publicize it, and (b) dollars to donuts it was leaked by someone in Scott’s executive offices.

That’s an educated surmise on my part; VTDigger’s story about the letter doesn’t specify where they got their information, which is an unfortunate omission.

Anyway, leadership has been tracking this from the moment Scott first mentioned the idea, and gotten nothing back from the Scott administration. Which now says it’s working on a response.

I guess they were too busy doing… flood relief? But I doubt that the governor’s legal staff is waist deep in Big Muddy. They’ve had plenty of time to craft a response if they wanted to.

But they didn’t. They wanted a public stink that would make them look good and make Democratic leadership look petty and out of touch.

Mission accomplished.

I don’t know how Baruth and Krowinski should have handled this. They were certainly justified in communicating their concerns directly, not through a press release. They did so not once, not twice, but three times. They got no answer for the better part of two full months.

They still haven’t gotten an answer. They did get the situation aired publicly in a way that made them seem more interested in their own prestige than in recovering from a historic disaster.

Meanwhile, Scott spox Jason Maulucci argued that his boss took direct action on the plates because he couldn’t wait for proper channels.

“The executive branch has to respond to emergencies and we have to act quickly. We have a part-time Legislature that’s not in session, and the executive branch has to perform its role. That’s what we did.”

Yeah, well, the license plate program was hardly Defcon One. Indeed, considering that the first plate has yet to be sold, the program hardly falls into the category of “emergency response.” Also, the executive branch had plenty of time to devise the program but no time at all to communicate with the Legislature about it? Really?

Truth is, the administration didn’t care what the Legislature thought, and didn’t care about the constitutional division of powers.

They did care about scoring a nice political victory over the Legislature. Well, congratulations. You got it. Don’t be surprised if the Dem/Prog supermajority comes back to Montpelier in January with a new taste for confrontation.