BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) – It’s not the Hatfields and McCoys, maybe not even Rosie vs. The Donald, but a Massachusetts firm appears to have sparked a war of words between New Hampshire and Vermont.

The Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce commissioned Charism Advisors of Lexington, Mass. to help Burlington, Vermont’s largest city, come up with a new brand identity to market the region.

The $35,000 study recommends that Burlington come up with a slogan – sort of like the Texas capital’s “Keep Austin Weird” or Omaha, Nebraska’s “Rare. Well Done.”

But the consultant’s 11-page report also takes a shot at a neighbor to the east.

“Vermont without Burlington is ‘New Hampshire,’ a nice-looking but rather drab state with little to do, no hub of civilization; just somewhere to pass through.”

New Hampshire is not amused.

New Hampshire Agriculture Commissioner Steve Taylor, a dairy farmer and former managing editor of the Valley News, a paper that circulates in both states, called the report’s description of his state “preposterous.”

He extolled the beauty of New Hampshire’s White Mountains, its seacoast, the Connecticut River valley.

“That’s terrible. Drab!” Taylor said. “Thirty-five thousand bucks. Boy, did they get taken.”

New Hampshire and Vermont, two states that fit together on the map like puzzle pieces, long have had a friendly rivalry and been fodder for comparison. Their politics often are seen as matching their geography, with Vermont on the left and New Hampshire on the right.

But neither state is what it used to be. Vermont has a Republican governor; New Hampshire a Democratic one. Vermont ice cream mavens Ben and Jerry have sold out to an international conglomerate. Geology, hydrology and gravity got the better of New Hampshire’s iconic “Old Man on the Mountain,” and the granite outcropping tumbled down Cannon Mountain in 2003.

“We don’t call him the Old Man anymore,” said Dick Hamilton of Littleton, N.H., retired from a long career in tourism promotion. “We call him Cliff.”

“If you want to watch the grass grow, go to Vermont,” Hamilton said. “If you want to go and get something exciting done, go to New Hampshire.”

When a memorial is erected to the Old Man next year, there most likely will be ice cream for sale at the site, Hamilton said. “I don’t think it’ll be Ben & Jerry’s.”

Rebecca Rule, a writer and humorist from Northwood, N.H., talked up the annual gathering of motorcycle enthusiasts from all over the country and the auto racing in Loudon.

“When 100,000 people gather on a summer day at the New Hampshire International Speedway,” she said, “this is what they say to each other: ‘O my, so drab. I wish we had something else to do.”‘

Several people speculated that the Massachusetts consultant called New Hampshire “just somewhere to pass through” because the quickest way to drive from Lexington, Mass., to Burlington, Vt., is through New Hampshire.

Burlington certainly has its charms. Rising on a hill above Lake Champlain – it’s sometimes called New England’s West Coast – the city of about 40,000 is home to the University of Vermont and a cultural mecca and is routinely ranked as one of the best places in the country to live.

This week it’s hosting the annual Discover Jazz Festival, which began Friday night with the Vermont All-State Jazz Ensemble opening for the Eddie Palmieri Afro-Caribbean Jazz Septet. Both bands got raucous standing ovations from the Flynn Theater crowd.

But the idea that Vermont without Burlington is New Hampshire didn’t set well with some Vermonters, either.

“The best thing about Burlington is it’s near Vermont,” said David Kelley, a longtime Montpelier lawyer and former Republican gubernatorial candidate.

AP-ES-06-02-07 1144EDT