So what gives? Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo says he wants the state to spend $3 billion to redo the gloomy Penn Station in Manhattan, and at the same time he has his hands on the throats of school districts, which are being squeezed by his signature tax cap. 

This year, the tax-levy increase allowed for schools that are unable to win an almost two-thirds majority in a budget vote is .12 percent. This means that for a district like Springs, which is expecting enrollment to continue to climb, getting enough in taxes to adequately educate all of its children will be more difficult. Proposed increases in state aid are not likely to make up the difference. It’s odd, frankly, that Mr. Cuomo would want to be so generous with city commuters while kicking struggling public schools in the shins.

The tax cap is grossly unfair. Town boards and other government entities that do not face public votes on their budgets can easily vote to exceed the annual limit. In East Hampton, just three of the five town board members need agree to go past this year’s .12 percent. For a school tax to rise more than that, it would take 60 percent of those voting to say yes — a very high hurdle indeed.

Fredrick U. Dicker, writing in The New York Post last week, cited an unnamed Albany source that claimed Mr. Cuomo’s leftward posturing — money for transit! — is all about returning to Washington, where he was secretary of housing in the Bill Clinton administration. The calculation is complicated, but would center on Mr. Cuomo’s seeking the Democratic nomination for president in 2020. In the meantime, you would hope he would at least try to improve the public schools. Instead, he has short-changed prekindergarten funding and has hopes for an education tax credit for wealthy parents of private school students.

Critics of the governor’s education policies have pointed out that at a time when the state is enjoying a billion-dollar annual surplus, the tax cap, at least for schools, should be scrapped entirely. But, of course, if Mr. Cuomo is indeed thinking about a run for the White House someday, a tough-on-taxes record might be something he wants to protect. 

It is in many ways good that Mr. Cuomo’s tax-levy cap forces school districts to be wiser with their finances, but it is wrong to have left it at that. With ultimate control over education resting with Albany, more must be done to help either consolidate districts or control costs without impacting students. As things stand, the governor, State Education Department, and Legislature earn a failing grade.

A request from Sag Harbor Village to the East Hampton Town Trustees to discuss ways to manage an all-but-unregulated seasonal anchorage is an example of how demands on the area’s natural resources and infrastructure have outpaced government control.

What prompted Sag Harbor’s request to the town trustees was the expanding presence of private vessels kept on moorings or anchored for a night or two beyond the village breakwater. At present, the village has jurisdiction only within the breakwater, where moorings are strictly regulated and waste pump-out boats are available. 

Beyond the breakwater, things get wooly. According to a member of the Sag Harbor Waterways Committee, as many as 70 boats at a time might be found off Havens Beach and east toward Barcelona Neck. Some have broken loose in storms and washed up, becoming the village’s problem. Others have been known to illegally discharge sewage. Then there is the question of boaters coming ashore in Sag Harbor for shopping, services, and even to dispose of garbage, adding to an already crowded community in the busy months. “We’re getting the brunt of it,” the village harbormaster said. 

State Assemblyman Fred. W. Thiele Jr., whose other paying job is Sag Harbor Village attorney, recently introduced a bill in the State Legislature that would expand the area under village control from the current 1,500 feet from shore. But 1,500 feet is also the distance that East Hampton Town Trustee jurisdiction extends. This means that a cooperative approach is necessary no matter where a new line might be drawn.

Mr. Thiele is in an odd position, particularly since the bill he sponsored on behalf of the village could be seen as a land-grab attempt against the town trustees, whose interests he is also supposed to represent as a member of the Assembly. To avoid questions of an ethical nature, Mr. Thiele should swiftly seek to have his bill withdrawn. 

Meanwhile, Sag Harbor officials and the town trustees are continuing to talk. This is good. The waters beyond the breakwater cannot continue to be a no-man’s land, regardless of which local government asserts authority in the end.

You have to hand it to Amos Goodman for running a credible campaign for Suffolk legislator. As a newcomer to politics, he has offered plenty of ideas and put in a huge effort to get elected. Among Mr. Goodman’s strongest arguments is that he would make tackling Suffolk’s ongoing budget deficits a central focus. He takes strongly pro-environment positions, and like his opponent, Bridget Fleming, is interested in untangling how sales tax revenue is, or isn’t, shared with the South Fork. A major negative are the robo-calls bashing Ms. Fleming, which are irresponsible and serve to diminish his credibility.

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For her part, Ms. Fleming tended toward generalizations in recent conversations about what she would do if elected. But, given the limits presented by the county’s dire finances, that is perhaps to be expected. From a South Fork perspective, however, she is the more practical choice for the Second District. It comes down to County Executive Steve Bellone, who is expected to win re-election on Tuesday.

The calculation works this way: There are two East End county legislators, one for the North Fork and one for the South. This means that our end of Suffolk will always be outnumbered by 16 votes in legislative matters. Ms. Fleming, collegial and a Democrat, as is Mr. Bellone, is more likely to be effective and to tip the balance, if only slightly, in the Second District’s favor. Mr. Goodman, who proved himself a bit of a fire-slinger this fall in debates, would find it harder to gain the county executive’s backing on key measures, which would be a hindrance. In addition, Ms. Fleming’s solid experience on the Southampton Town Board makes her the better choice.

Some time ago East Hampton Village passed an ordinance prohibiting anything other than street and directional signs on public property. And it has worked; passers-by are able to enjoy this fall’s unusually vivid foliage unencumbered. This is something the East Hampton Town Board should look into in light of the unsightly proliferation of political come-ons stuck along on nearly every roadside.

The election this year has been marked not only by the stunning amount of helicopter money that poured in to aid the local Republican candidates but the perhaps related number of signs supporting them. Sure there were placards out for Democrats, but far fewer. You have to hand it to the Republicans’ side for industriousness — and bad taste. The otherwise lovely fall roadsides have been diminished by the red-white-and-blue folderol. Theft has been a distraction as well, with one vocal Democrat having been caught in the act on video. Enough is enough, we say.

Let’s hope that both political parties quickly dispatch volunteers to take down their respective signs. Once that is done, officials should work on adopting new rules to keep East Hampton’s streets and public green spaces clear of visual clutter as the next election approaches.

New York State has released a first-draft plan for considering sea level rise. But for all the effort, and a self-congratulatory public relations flurry, there is little promise of improving coastal policy. This is a regrettable failure.

The problem is this: Though the overwhelming evidence is that sea level is creeping upward, threatening low-lying and beachfront areas, government officials from New York’s villages to the state capital have been unable, or unwilling, to respond in ways that matter. East Hampton’s project to sandbag the downtown Montauk ocean beach, consistently opposed by independent experts, is a case in point. So, too, is the entire region’s continued expansion of development in the danger zones.

Three years after Hurricane Sandy and decades after warnings were issued, the state is only now getting around to making official predictions about how high the water is expected to go. But the state is not taking the next logical step of imposing new construction standards and changing permit requirements. Instead, Albany is handing responsibility down the line to those who might or might not be able to incorporate the predictions into routine decision-making.

The Montauk Army Corps effort was to a large degree the product of a misrepresentation by the previous town supervisor, Bill Wilkinson, who claimed Sandy was to blame for ongoing erosion. Those who followed him in Town Hall were hamstrung: Had they blocked the work and some of the motels begun to fall, the responsibility would have been theirs.

The East Hampton Town Board recently named a coastal resiliency committee to study the issue and make policy recommendations. The obvious risk is that whatever the committee comes up with will be left to elected officials to enact. Consideration should be given to changing the way shoreline projects are evaluated, especially in East Hampton Town. It might be better to give erosion-control project review to the town planning board, whose members’ seven-year terms are supposed to insulate them from politics. Free from fear of being turned out of office, planning board members might indeed be more likely to make the most difficult decisions.

Whatever the solution, it is clear that local governments cannot by themselves meet the political and emotional challenges of saying no to certain waterfront property owners and beginning a program of managed retreat. Albany’s estimate of how bad the problem will be for shore areas is a start, but falls short. Without real guidance from the top, business will continue as usual along the coast, with slow-moving disaster the most likely outcome.

Now that the East Hampton Town Board has a problem on its hands of a long queue of people willing to be arrested in protest of the Army Corps of Engineers’ project in Montauk as well as some 250 others who pressed the matter at a meeting on Tuesday, the question is where the town can go from here. But it is even more important to consider whether coastal policy all the way from Town Hall to Albany and Capitol Hill must be overhauled.

Several local figures who sought money for the sandbag seawall, including former Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and his then-allies on the town board, have remained out of the limelight although they more or less handed those who followed them into Town Hall a done deal.

However, the final responsibility for what is going on rests entirely with the current board, which signed off on the project and helped negotiate necessary access agreements with adjacent property owners. To be charitable, perhaps they, like many of the past days’ protestors, could not envision what the project would actually look like until the bulldozers rolled.

Up to last week, only a handful of individuals and just one organization, Defend H20, were on what we see as the right side, arguing against the seawall and pushing for a sensible, long-term program of moving endangered businesses and residences away from the shore — or condemning them and building a resilient dune in their places.

Supervisor Larry Cantwell and the rest of the town board had a chance early on to apply the brakes but chose not to. Perhaps they, like the project’s individual supporters and the Montauk Chamber of Commerce, allowed themselves to be conned by the idea of a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in the form of millions of federal dollars to be spent here as part of the Army Corps’s Fire-Island-to-Montauk study. They should have known better: Destroying a beach and setting aside years of environmental regulation on the mere wisp of a promise of cash from Washington was outrageous.

As we have argued before, local governments, as well as the State of New York, are doomed when it comes to managing a rapidly changing coast unless a major change of policy occurs. The Army Corps, with its single-headed focus on preserving property, is the wrong agency for the task. Change must come from the very top after a frank national conversation about how sea level rise and storm risk is going to be dealt with, and by whom.

What is happening today on the Montauk beach makes it clear that the current regulatory structure is a failure, and that new, more far-sighted leadership will have to come from Washington.

Sag Harbor Village officials and their counterparts on the Southampton Town Board appear in agreement on a wish to see a portion of the Sag Harbor waterfront revert to public ownership. A developer has been working on a plan for townhouse-style units there and has filed application paperwork with the village. In effect, the structures would wall off that side of Sag Harbor from the water.

In a recent vote, the Southampton board agreed to add the property, which includes several parcels near the village’s 7-Eleven, to the town’s community preservation fund list. This will allow an official appraisal to be made and then, perhaps, an offer to the property owners. Therein lies the rub: Representatives of the partnership that controls the site have insisted that it is not for sale.

If you have ever driven over the bridge from North Haven approaching Sag Harbor and looked out to the right, you have seen the site. For Sag Harbor residents, as well as for the thousands of visitors who pass by each year, we hope that Greystone Property Development, a Manhattan company believed to own the controlling interest, reconsiders.

A deal should be struck to buy the developers out. A park would be much more welcome than residences and tie in well with the village’s existing walkable waterfront. Sag Harbor and Southampton should be willing to do whatever it takes to make the publicly accessible open space there a reality.

News last month that two more sections of Accabonac Harbor had been permanently closed to shellfishing was met with little more than a collective shrug. We were surprised by the lack of outcry, and hope that other announcements of this depressing sort are not ahead.

About 20 acres in the harbor were declared off-limits year round by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation after it said routine water sampling had found unacceptable levels of fecal coliform bacteria, a sign of possible contamination by sewage. Shellfish taken from areas with high bacteria have the potential to cause human illness if consumed.

That these sites had already been listed as seasonally contaminated suggests that efforts to improve water quality have a long way to go. Concerned about the harbor, East Hampton Town officials have bought a number of parcels that are in the southern Accabonac watershed in Springs, but not enough to make a real difference. Ideas about septic system upgrades have not made it past the most preliminary stage either.

As with perennially troubled waters in parts of Montauk, the newly verboten Accabonac Harbor areas should be subject to a vigorous restoration effort by both citizens and government. As it looks to the coming year, East Hampton Town Hall must make reversing this trend a top priority.

Now that the absentee votes for East Hampton Town Trustee have been counted, the stunning reversal of fortune for the board’s longstanding Republican majority has become clear. Diane McNally, the trustees’ clerk and a well-regarded, experienced incumbent with Republican, Conservative, and Reform endorsement, barely slipped back into office, with several Democratic newcomers polling significantly better than she did. 

When the results were made official last week, the Democrats wound up with a rare 6-to-3 majority on the board. In an ordinary election, this would not have happened.

Ms. McNally and the other Republican candidates might take solace in thinking the defeat was not their fault. Blame the airport, or, to be more precise, blame the local Republican leadership, who welcomed with open arms the more than $389,000 in aviation industry money that came their way. 

The unprecedented poor Republican showing calls for a period of self-reflection. From top to bottom, the results were a disaster for Republican candidates. It is apparent from the numbers that the party’s local turnout was suppressed. Indeed, Tom Knobel got the fewest votes in the modern era in a major-party supervisor’s contest. But the most telling evidence that dependable Republican voters stayed home is that two members of the party who had bipartisan support, Highway Superintendent Steve Lynch and Town Justice Lisa R. Rana, got about half as many votes on the Republican ballot line than they did on the Democratic.

In part, a plausible explanation for the collapse is that turnout tends to be heavier in years with hot contests, and Mr. Knobel was not generally expected to be a meaningful challenger for Supervisor Larry Cantwell. But the biggest factor was all the money that flowed to the Republicans from aviation interests.

With an entrenched and divided electorate, elections these days are less about how an individual votes than who takes the time to go to the polls. Airport money may have dampened the enthusiasm of rank-and-file Republicans, and certainly galvanized Democrats, whose turnout was roughly in line with recent norms.

We are hesitant to advise political party committees on internal leadership, but in this case it is warranted. To have viable candidates — and meaningful campaigns in the future — those who thought it was okay not to repudiate the out-of-town flood of cash should step down. It is a safe bet that some among the incumbent Republican trustees who lost this year would say exactly the same thing.

As world leaders meet in Paris this week to try to agree on a meaningful strategy to combat global warming, those of us who live on the East End should pay close attention. Eastern Long Island is especially vulnerable to sea level rise, one of the byproducts of a hotter planet. Current and future officials will face budget-busting challenges in the years ahead, as well as painful choices about whether to protect private property at the expense of common assets such as the region’s beaches and public waterfronts.

The conspiracy enthusiasts and lonely Internet prognosticators who insist the science behind the crisis is wrong are not to be taken seriously. The vast majority of expert opinion is consistent and daunting. In fact, the language used to describe the predictable effects of climate change is increasingly blunt. 

Even if the Paris talks were successful in holding warming to 6 degrees Fahrenheit, Coral Davenport, who covers climate change for The New York Times, observed, “Scientists say that that level of warming is still likely to cause food shortages and widespread extinctions of plant and animal life.” But even 6 degrees would be regarded as positive since current trends would push the planet’s increase to a “far more destructive temperature increase of more than 8 degrees Fahrenheit.”

Certainly there are individual, government, and corporate steps that should be taken. Individuals can choose electric and hybrid vehicles to eliminate tailpipe emissions. Households and businesses can reduce consumption of fossil fuels. East Hampton Town has set a 100-percent renewable energy goal for 2030. It has also sought to promote large-scale solar power facilities on two town-owned sites. And yet the reality is that greater steps will be required, and this will take national leadership.

It is quite shocking that the United States negotiators in Paris have conceded that there would be no way to get a two-thirds majority in the Republican-controlled Senate for a climate treaty. Instead, they hope to set voluntary goals. Meanwhile, Republicans in the House of Representatives are trying to block several of President Obama’s measures to curb domestic carbon emissions. 

New York’s senators, Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer, both Democrats, could reliably be expected to vote in favor of a climate deal. As for Representative Lee Zeldin, however, there is reason to doubt his commitment to turning the tide even though his congressional district is among those most likely to see severe flooding, erosion, and coastal inundation as a result of sea level rise. “I’m not sold yet on the whole argument that we have as serious a problem with climate change as other people,” he told Newsday last year. This is not only wrong, it is dangerous.

Then, too, looking at what is being said in the run-up to the Republican presidential primary, there is little hope of anything approaching a national consensus on climate change. This is a shame because divisions within the United States diminish the prospects for a successful outcome in Paris. 

With Mr. Zeldin irrationally questioning the science and with New York’s senators’ positions more or less assured, to be effective on a larger scale, East End residents must use their voices — and perhaps dollars — to try to move public opinion. It is in both our local interest and that of the planet on which we live.