It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the season of prosperity, it was the season of economic struggle; it was the epoch of drug treatment, it was the epoch of addiction; it was the age of balanced budgets, it was the age of unsustainable budget growth. In short, it was a tale of two Vermonts spun last week by the outgoing governor, Peter Shumlin, and the incoming governor, Phil Scott, in their farewell and inaugural addresses, respectively.

Shumlin, a Democrat departing after six years on the job, naturally accentuated the positive that occurred on his watch: The addition of 16,000 new jobs; per capita income rising faster than the national average; broadband internet expanded to 30,000 homes and businesses; the number of deficient bridges and roads in the state reduced by half; a new, state-of-the-art hospital for the mentally ill constructed; budgets that were balanced without tax increases; education reform; and national leadership in identifying and addressing the crisis of opioid addiction.

Scott, a Republican moving up from lieutenant governor, begged to differ — albeit politely — from this unrelentingly sunny assessment. He sees a state in the midst of an affordability crisis for ordinary people, one where a shrinking workforce and high housing costs are retarding business development to the detriment of all, including those who rely on state services that could be paid for with increased revenue. Scott looks at the state’s education spending and detects misplaced priorities that are locked in place by a fear of change. As he develops his own budget proposal for the coming fiscal year, he identifies a $70 million gap that needs to be filled even as state revenues are flat and costs are increasing faster than can be sustained. And he thinks there’s still a lot of work to be done to get a handle on the public health crisis that opioid addiction represents.

So which version of reality is right? They both are. Call it the two-state-of-mind solution.

Shumlin left office with some genuine accomplishments to his credit, as he enumerated, but these were overshadowed to some degree by two disasters over which he presided: The rollout of the deeply troubled Vermont Health Connect digital marketplace for purchasing health insurance under Obamacare; and the massive EB-5 fraud scheme alleged to have taken place in the Northeast Kingdom. It must also be said on his behalf that even though his ambitions for the state were large and he tended to minimize the difficulties of achieving them, at the end of the day they did not blind him to reality. When his much-touted resolve to move Vermont to a single-payer health care system proved too expensive, he simply dropped it.

If Scott’s agenda is less ambitious, it does seem appropriately focused on the state’s demographic challenges, in particular the need to make living in Vermont more affordable so it can retain and attract more young working families who hold down the jobs, buy the houses, pay the taxes and send their children to the schools that underpin middle class prosperity. Whether that aspiration is attainable is another question. Shumlin’s predecessor, Jim Douglas, had a similar view but was unable to make great strides on the affordability front.

In any case, to be fair to both the old and new governors, they appear to genuinely respect each other, and both expressed continuing allegiance to the underlying values that Vermonters share — a commitment to tolerance, civil liberties, civil discourse and bipartisan problem-solving. In this day and age, that’s not an inconsiderable area of agreement.