At his weekly press conference today, Gov. Phil Scott again pushed his affordability agenda and characterized the Legislature as tax-and-spendthrifts. And answered some pointed questions about his emergency shelter program, which saw a substantial uptick in business last night (although still well below projected capacity). A total of 34 people slept in the governor’s slapped-together, nighttime-only shelters.

The governor defended his program as “a success,” although he didn’t seem awfully confident. His voice got noticeably quieter when talking homelessness than when he was hammering Democrats about “affordability.” And when push came to shove and he’d reached the limit of his ability to emit thick clouds of verbiage, he twice resorted to that most desperate of defenses: “We didn’t have to do anything.”

Sounds like headstone material to me. Sure, you didn’t have to do anything. No one had a gun to your head. But sweet Jesus, what a statement. The fact that he wasn’t absolutely required to do anything is supposed to make his crappy shelters more acceptable? I don’t think so.

Are we supposed to judge his administration by that standard? There’s actually precious little he has to do. As Donald Trump’s presidency showed, the machinery of government largely keeps moving even if the captain is an ill-tempered, narcissistic boob with a short attention span. But if that’s all you aspire to, well, please don’t run for re-election. We deserve better.

Here’s something that came up hours later. At the presser, the governor and his officials told reporters they still had no cost estimate for the shelters. But tonight, VTDigger and Vermont Public posted a report that the shelters were costing $50,000 per day — while the cost of simply maintaining vouchers for the people who’d lost their lodgings would have been less than $37,000 per night.

The $50,000 figure was discovered via a public records request. Which means the administration knew about the price tag and lied to reporters at the press conference.

This is what Phil Scott thinks of as “a success.” Fewer people sheltered, hundreds of lives disrupted, helping agencies working their fingers to the bone to help those who were “exited,” and it’s costing about 20% more than maintaining the status quo.

Tell me again about Scott’s reputation as a prudent manager.

A brief media note. Both Digger and Vermont Public had reporters in attendance at the presser. Apparently those reporters didn’t tell their colleagues who worked on the cost story about the administration’s claims of ignorance. Because if they had, the story could have included the nice little tidbit about Scott and his officials misleading the media. Would have added some extra sizzle to the piece, no?

Back to the governor. During the presser, he asserted that “It all seemed to work out.”

Maybe, if you don’t look real hard and you ignore the voices of those who were trying to help people requalify for motel vouchers or arrange makeshift shelter or, in many cases, handing out tents and sleeping bags to people “exited” (lovely bureaucratic word) from their motels. (And if you ignore the fact that the shelters cost more than motel stays.) Those people will tell you that communication was sorely lacking, that people were given extremely little time to qualify for extended stays, and that the whole thing was unforgiving and inhumane.

Not mentioned at the presser: In a story posted by Seven Days last night, Department of Children and Families Commissioner Chris Winters practically accused medical care providers of committing fraud in approving waivers for people being exited. Winters said the state has been discouraging practitioners from signing waivers just to keep people in motels. and added that the state will be reviewing all forms to see if any individual providers signed lots of them.

“We just want to make sure they’re taking that responsibility really seriously and understand the implications if they stretch that,” Winters said.

Yuh-huh. Winters seems more concerned that people are qualifying for re-entry than that quite a few folks who did qualify (or would have) were kicked to the curb anyway. If Winters offered any evidence that some practitioners are gaming the system, Seven Days did not report it.

The administration talks a good game on the shelters, but the facts don’t back them up. As I’ve said before, my description of the plan as a “clusterfuck” seems overly generous to the Scott administration. What’s worse than a clusterfuck?