Maine’s tourism director, a public official who gets paid to promote pine trees and lobster, and his wife are touting something else with the vanity license plate on their SUV.

New York.

ILOVENY is jointly registered to Dann Lewis and his wife, Sherry, according to state records. Lewis has served as director for the Maine Office of Tourism since 1996. His wife has worked in marketing, recently for the Maine Eastern Railroad.

Lewis said the license plate belongs to his wife, a native New Yorker. He believes there’s nothing wrong with ILOVENY.

“What is the problem? One of our biggest (tourist) markets is New York,” Lewis said. “It might give New Yorkers a warm, fuzzy feeling.”

But an outspoken critic of the Office of Tourism says both Dann and his wife own the SUV and its vanity plate. He believes it sends the wrong message.

“If there’s one person in the entire state who shouldn’t have an ‘I love New York’ plate, it’s the director of tourism,” Lance Dutson said.

Dutson, who lives in Searsmont, recently highlighted the plate on his blog, Mainewebreport.com. He provided a mock photo of the plate under the heading “Maine Pride.”

Dutson often criticizes Lewis, his wife and the Office of Tourism in his 1,500-hits-a-week blog. Last spring, he was sued for libel, defamation and copyright infringement by a New York advertising agency that worked for the tourism office.

The lawsuit was quickly dropped. But during the fight, Dutson ran background checks on the people involved. The checks turned up Lewis’ license plate. Dutson found the file when he was cleaning out paperwork recently and he threw the information onto his Web site.

He’s since gotten several e-mails, he said, from blog readers incredulous that a tourism director would display such affection for another state.

“It just kind of signifies a callous disregard for tourism,” he said.

Dutson calls the plate “ridiculous.”

Lewis says the same of Dutson’s criticism.

“I think it’s much ado about nothing by a disturbed individual,” he said.

Both Lewis and his wife have lived in New York City, and Lewis said he was involved in the city’s famous “I Love New York” campaign. He said his wife got the ILOVENY plate some time after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

“It was a chance for her to show some solidarity and empathy at the time,” he said.

That doesn’t mean, he said, that he or his wife have anything against Maine.

“It has nothing to do with that,” he said. “Anybody who thinks that is a sicko, quite frankly.”

He maintains that no state officials have complained about the plate. The governor even chuckled at it once, he said.

Lewis’ boss, the commissioner of economic development, thinks ILOVENY is fine.

“A lot of people love New York,” Jack Cashman said. “I don’t think it’s a crime to love New York.”

Dutson agrees that it’s not illegal, but he believes it is in poor taste. And he’d like to see the state’s tourism director trade it in for something else.

“SORRYME might be a good vanity plate,” he said.