Attention in Albany may be focused on the apparent downfall of the Legislature’s top Democrat, Sheldon Silver, in a corruption scandal that cuts very close to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, but the critically important work of settling a budget for the coming fiscal year goes on. Two recent reports from the New York Department of Environmental Conservation have raised valid questions about the agency’s capabilities where wildlife is concerned and painted a picture of it as a failed agency.

The most disturbing report came at the end of the year and said that without aggressive action as many as 186 animal species could be imperiled in the state within 10 years. The other described the state’s ocean and estuary waters as in a state of crisis and said greater efforts were necessary to head off human impact, habitat degradation, and climate change. Sadly, Mr. Cuomo’s budget offers little in the way of good news in these regards. The D.E.C. simply needs a lot more money right away and perhaps a top-to-bottom redesign for the long haul. Here’s why.

The D.E.C. manages a huge range of properties, including about 4.5 million acres of land, more than 300 boat launching and fishing sites, 102 flood-control structures, 52 campgrounds, 12 fish hatcheries, 4 camps, 2 environmental education centers, and 1 tree nursery. That’s just the hardware.

On the program side, the agency oversees coastal projects, pollution control, hunting, fishing, mining, oil extraction, air quality, and even runs what amounts to its own armed police force. In Mr. Cuomo’s budget for the coming fiscal year, funding for the D.E.C. is increased by an insignificant 1.2 percent to $898 million. The spending plan’s priorities, too, seem out of touch, with the focus on industrial site cleanups, oil spill preparedness, farmland preservation in the Southern Tier and Hudson Valley, parks infrastructure, and public access. Needed or not, the budget also includes $50 million for improvements at the state fairgrounds outside Syracuse. Remember, this is at a time when the agency’s staffing levels are down about 10 percent from their peak and funding off by nearly a quarter from that of pre-Great Recession days.

For those concerned with wildlife, visiting migratory species, and marine ecosystems, there is little to be happy about in the near-term D.E.C. budget. Looking further out, things do not get much better. Capital spending increases slightly for 2016, then begins to fall off in subsequent years. The Environmental Protection Fund, which is supposed to help pay for critical habitat preservation and other programs, will see a modest increase of $10 million, which is far from enough.

That the D.E.C. is overtasked is clear, and the vast span of its responsibilities can lead to some peculiar conflicts. For example, it is both the lead agency for the Army Corps’s downtown Montauk erosion-control project and the regulator of the sand mines from which the raw material for the project will be dug. It was little surprise that the D.E.C. declared that the Montauk plan could go ahead without formal environmental review.

Breaking up the D.E.C. into several parts might be the best hope for the New York environment. In one scenario, one might think of one division as a regulatory agency concerned with pollution, extractive industries, and human health. Another might be responsible for activities such as hunting and fishing. And a third, and perhaps most important, would concentrate on the state’s wildlife and wild places.

As the two troubling reports indicate, the D.E.C. that New York has now is just not working.

Kathleen Cunningham’s appointment to the East Hampton Town Planning Board last week was notable in one respect that has drawn little notice. By replacing a male board member who moved away, she became the third woman on the seven-member panel. This makes the planning board the exception to the rule in East Hampton Town, where among the boards whose composition is determined by town board vote, men occupy more than three-quarters of the seats. And among all the boards, the vast majority are white and non-Latino.

According to rosters posted on the town’s website, there are 47 men on the various appointed boards and 15 women. Women do not hold the majority of any of them, and they are sharply outnumbered nearly everywhere except on the ethics committee. On both the architectural review board and the zoning board of appeals there is one woman and four men. And on the combined airport committees men exceed women 18 to 3.

Elected boards are different. The five-member town board, chosen by voters in staggered elections, includes two women. The board of assessors is made up of two women and one man. And while a woman, Diane McNally, is the presiding officer of the East Hampton Town Trustees, it drifts back toward the general trend with six men and three women.

It is hard to do more than speculate about why the unequal distribution of the sexes in government is the norm; perhaps it has more to do with the general culture than anything else. The United States Congress, which is about 80-percent male, is worse than East Hampton Town in this regard. With women making up slightly more than half the population, they should be better represented among all the country’s elected and appointed bodies, as should people of color and of a broader range of ethnicities.

The latest in a string of shockers out of Albany came this week when it became known that the Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo administration had begun automatically purging the computers of state workers of email messages more than 90 days old.

In a world that now runs on email, it is difficult to imagine anything more immediately destructive to the interests of government oversight and an open society. For the news media and the courts, as well as ordinary citizens, the right of access to official documents and communications is absolutely fundamental to the separation of democracy from the siren temptations of authoritarianism. Other than those eager to cover up malfeasance or embarrassment, as well as to scrub the record in the face of a prospective presidential bid at some point by their boss, few could see this as even a remotely good idea.

First described by The Albany Times-Union, mass deletions of email messages began last week at as many as 27 state agencies and departments. In a statement already chilling to open-government activists, the governor’s new chief information officer wrote that the goal was a new, centralized, easy-to-clear email record “making government work better.” Nonsense. This is an attempt to make Albany more secretive than it already is and to help officials evade scrutiny when things go awry.

Few public initiatives take less than three months to complete, so getting rid of records at that point could well make the state’s work less efficient, not more, as important documents slip away. Allowing wholesale clearing of in-boxes will only make state officials’ jobs more difficult. Imagine the chaos as regulators have to think months back, perhaps to find out who may have received something of interest when a difficult task was tackled, and then circle around to get a replacement copy.

The state put out a list of categories of email that should be saved manually, as reported by ProPublica, but they covered conclusive or final actions rather than the process or reasoning behind them. In addition, the rules ran to an impossible 188 pages, itemizing 225 different types of records. Most troubling for the news media, plaintiffs, and outside groups, messages concerning administrative analysis, planning, and the development of procedures can be tossed out as soon as they’re “obsolete.”

The impulse for secrecy and to dodge accountability appears endemic on the American political scene from top to bottom. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used a private account for much of her communication while in that post. Former East Hampton Town Councilwoman Theresa Quigley maintained a personal gmail address from which she circulated board agendas to a select group of supporters. In each case, they appeared able to skirt document-retention rules.

It is only by hindsight that the importance of some messages can even be known. Consider a recent example in the State of New Jersey, where, five months after an unexplained lane closure on the George Washington Bridge, the discovery of a brief email exchange pointed to its political nature. The details of this scandal could not have been lost on Albany’s executive chamber. Under the new Cuomo retention policy, had that email emanated from a New York office, it would likely have been deleted well before it and other damning communications could have come to light.

With regard to open government, New York State officials at all levels already find it almost impossible to comply with Freedom of Information requests. Allowing massive quantities of email to dissolve into the ether will make things worse. For example, The East Hampton Star has been seeking without success a key document from August sent to the State Department of State that apparently laid out a suspect legal rationale for the planned Army Corps of Engineers downtown Montauk erosion-control project. Could that have been among the records deemed not worthy of preservation?

The new state rules also contain a disturbing Catch-22. Although those that might be subject to a Freedom of Information request are to be preserved, such requests must be filed within the allotted 90 days. Seek something on day 91, and it will be gone, in most cases. Moreover, those seeking information from government often do not know exactly what documents they want, only the subject and approximate date. It would therefore make sense to save everything. Certainly, the Microsoft system the state uses has the capacity — up to 30 years’ worth of email, according to reports. Federal policy is to hold on to email for at least seven years, and permanently for executive staff.

If the wholesale destruction of email is allowed to continue, it will leave huge gaps in the record, diminish confidence in government, and hide wrongdoing. The policy must be reversed, ideally by the New York Legislature’s passing a bill that forces Mr. Cuomo’s hand.

New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has taken on the state’s public school teachers, and they are firing back — hard. It’s about time.      

Schools and students have struggled under Mr. Cuomo’s signature 2-percent tax increase cap. Now, in his 2015 budget, the governor has proposed education policy changes linking half of a teacher’s evaluation to students’ standardized test scores. The greatest flaw in this disastrous reform is the fact that test results can depend on socioeconomic factors, notably wealth, and that linking teachers’ careers to scores could provide a strong disincentive for them to work with the state’s neediest students.

Mr. Cuomo has proposed increasing state education aid by as much as 5 percent for schools that sign on to the reforms. Rich districts could perhaps afford to sidestep them, but poorer districts, desperate for cash, might not have that luxury. He also has proposed sweetening the landscape for charter schools, which can draw away scarce funding, and he supports a backdoor path by which tax dollars could go to private and religious institutions.

As one education scholar said, the Cuomo plan would make teaching in the State of New York a very high-risk career choice. “You have made us the enemy,” 7 of the top 10 New York State teachers in the last decade wrote in a joint letter to the governor. The head of the New York State United Teachers union said, “He has declared war on the public schools.” This at a time when educators and students need all the support that can be mustered to cope with a rapidly changing world and altered job market.

One can see plenty of politics here. Teacher evaluations and school vouchers are popular with some Republicans interested in education reform. Mr. Cuomo’s 2-percent tax cap could be a message, intended for a future presidential campaign, that even though he is a Democrat he has reduced taxes in a traditionally liberal, high-tax state like New York and can do it anywhere. Unfortunately, the governor’s ambition has gotten in the way of sound policy.

What is called for now is a truce. Teachers have a tough enough job without having the governor as adversary-in-chief. Mr. Cuomo should rethink his education agenda to make it fair and especially provide for those school districts in greatest need of help.

A happy outcome appears assured for the Springs General Store, whose operator was faced with the prospect of shutting its doors due to a pending sale of the property. Now, as the last minute neared, an “angel” buyer apparently has emerged who will allow Kristi Hood to keep the store open. This welcome denouement may be the exception to the rule, where places and properties important to the community are threatened about as fast as real estate prices rise. And, thinking about it, there is a wide gulf between where the local historical societies leave off and the community preservation fund picks up into which places like the Springs General Store can fall.

This preservation gap is not unique to East Hampton. In Sag Harbor a while ago when the Bay Street Theater was threatening to decamp to Southampton, for example, the question was raised if the C.P.F. could be tapped to help keep it on Bay Street. The answer was no — perhaps wisely, since the more latitude public officials have to dip into such dedicated funds the more excuses they are likely to find to do so. Still, the problem remains, because the preservation fund is more or less precluded from being used for commercial ventures.

On Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., one can find a model of how important assets that may not meet the criteria for environmental or historical protection can be saved. Since 1975 the island’s private, nonprofit preservation trust has acquired, preserved, and managed endangered landmarks. These have included a general store, a chapel, a carousel, a grange hall, a former library, and even a catboat, one of three remaining by a renowned island designer. Funds have come from donations as well as from rentals of some of the properties for weddings, parties, concerts, and theater and dance performances. Other properties owned by the Martha’s Vineyard Trust include a working farm with affordable housing, a newspaper office, a gallery, and a shipyard chandlery.

This is something that would be terrific to see here. If there were a wish list of places we would think worthy, it might include an example of a Montauk Leisurama house, the Gwathmey houses on Bluff Road in Amagansett, the Sag Harbor Cinema, examples of the working waterfront, any of the little-used chapels scattered here and there, certain farm stands, artists’ studios, and houses in Amagansett’s Devon Colony and the Seven Sisters in Montauk. The list could go on.

Mind you, this is not to impugn the good work of community minded individuals or the existing historical societies and the managers of the community preservation fund. Rather, it is an acknowledgement that there is more to maintaining a sense of place than the most obvious and significant properties. It is something to think about as time and real estate pressure surge ever onward.

The world may be undergoing a sixth great wave of extinctions, as recently examined in a book by Elizabeth Kolbert, and this phenomenon may well extend to the seas, including those off our own shores. Symptoms include coral reef degradation, finfish population crashes, toxic algae blooms, and the slow loss of once-familiar and economically vital species. New York State has responded by drafting a 10-year Ocean Action Plan, but the document, while extensive, offers no source for the money needed to address its ambitious goals.

New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation is accepting written responses to the draft until March 9. Hearings at which the public can comment in person will be held on Tuesday at Operation Splash in Freeport and next Thursday at the Long Beach Public Library.

Though billed as a plan for the state’s ocean waters, the draft’s authors describe an integrated ecosystem that extends from upland watersheds to streams and brackish estuaries, into inshore bays and harbors, and then to the Atlantic itself. In this vast and varied environment, the authors set 61 goals for ensuring ecological integrity and sustainable development, avoiding commercial exploitation, and responding to climate change while involving the public in decision-making.

The missing funding is no minor matter. New York’s budget for the environment has been gutted at a time when pressures on it from all sides have multiplied. Among the projects contained in the draft for which money has yet to be set aside are removing impediments that block fish spawning runs, controlling pesticide runoff, and evaluating sewage outfalls. Determining the cause and what can be done about plummeting lobster catches is also on the list, as is a study to understand the impact of ocean acidification on shellfish.

Also on the to-do list, but not yet paid for, are a study of winter flounder declines, deep-water coral and sponge management, a study of seabirds, a baseline ocean monitoring system for the New York Bight, removal of marine debris, and better dredging oversight, as well as public education. One key area for which money is needed is an effort to update local planning practices to include coastal resiliency strategies to minimize the impacts of extreme weather events and sea-level rise.

Key tasks for which money has only partially been secured involve reducing the accidental bycatch of marine mammals, turtles, sea birds, and the endangered Atlantic sturgeon, for one. A horseshoe crab study needs more funding, as does work on underwater noise. The 18 areas the report’s authors consider already paid for tend in most cases to be more advisory than actually occurring. The heavy lifting on saving the marine environment has yet to be done.

The failure to find the needed money cannot be put onto the Ocean Action Plan’s authors. Rather, it is the responsibility of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and the State Legislature. As the threat of climate change increases and coastal development continues without adequate restraint, the will must be found in Albany to do more. A strong public outcry that the Ocean Action Plan must be made a priority for New York would help.

Town officials have struck the right balance in deciding in whose interest the East Hampton Airport and the skies for miles around it will be managed.

After years, if not decades, of deference to commercial demands, the town board last week proposed tough rules that put residents first. Board members, especially Coucilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, who spearheaded a monumental effort, deserve gratitude. Thanks comes not only from the immediate community but from the many thousands of people who live in the North and South Forks’ other towns and villages and have had to put up with aircraft noise for far too long.

East Hampton’s proposed solutions center on strict limits on when loud aircraft can land and take off, and how often. The noisier ones, including almost all makes and models of United States-certified helicopters, would be banned from the airport between 8 p.m. and 9 a.m. year round. Helicopters, except those summoned for emergencies, would be prohibited from May 1 through September, while other aircraft classified as noisy would be banned from noon Thursday through noon Monday and limited to a single trip per week during the high season. A hearing on the rules is planned for March 5 at LTV Studios in Wainscott.

Perhaps the most notable aspect of all this is that the voices of protest and threat of legal action have come almost exclusively from those with a financial stake in maintaining unlimited access to the airport. The private, recreational pilots who had, perhaps reflexively, opposed anything having to do with meaningful noise controls have for the most part seen the light — and a common enemy in the for-profit helicopter companies. As for all the well-heeled passengers who fly in on all those leather-seated noisemakers, cold drinks in hand? No one has heard a peep from them so far.

Expect the legal fight over the new limits to be long, hard, and expensive. East Hampton Town officials should proceed with confidence, knowing that residents here and across the East End have their backs.

The East Hampton Town Board should look beyond an apparent impasse on the airport’s budget and finance advisory subcommittee, which has stymied a financial review of planned limits on the noisiest kinds of aircraft.

By all appearances, the problem is a manufactured one in which some members of the subcommittee, those aligned with aviation interests, deliberately derailed the calculations in an effort to depict the proposed changes as costly to taxpayers. In fact, according to other members, the group tried to accommodate the dissenters’ demands for a minority report, among other things. However, when it became clear to the aviation side that a separate analysis would have had to be based on massaged assumptions that would not stand up under scrutiny, they just walked away from the process altogether.

As if on cue Tuesday, a lawyer hired by some of the helicopter companies that stand to lose a lucrative East Hampton route issued a statement. In it, he mischaracterized the deadlock, which, he said, “confirms the true economic hazards of the plan.” But this claim was based on no numbers whatsoever and should be suspect anyway, considering the source.

What is known and was previously acknowledged by the subcommittee as a whole is that the town’s plan to sharply limit helicopter flights would not result in financial Armageddon. In fact, the subcommittee told the town board late last year that fees would cover the expenses of running the airport and that long-term bonds could still be issued to pay for improvements.

One wild card described in that initial report, and repeated this week, was that legal challenges to new restrictions were likely and could be substantial. However, it is safe to say that town residents would be willing to shoulder the costs of litigation if quieter skies were the ultimate goal, and that the money need not come entirely from airport receipts.

In advance of a hearing on the proposed restrictions to begin this afternoon at LTV Studios in Wainscott, the East Hampton Town Board should not be dissuaded from the path it has set toward meaningful reduction in the number and frequency of the noisiest aircraft. This latest objection is just noise of a different sort.

In an interesting development, the Village of East Hampton’s code enforcement officer and fire inspector has suggested taking a hard look at basements. The issue Ken Collum identified and asked the village board to consider regulating is that a growing number of property owners are including vast underground warrens in building or reconstructing houses. They can do so because the village code does not require basement square-footage to be calculated in the size of a house. The loophole is resulting in bedrooms and other amenities beyond what would be allowed if they were aboveground.

Why this matters may not be immediately obvious, but it is. Land is finite here, as is the ability to handle growth. Infrastructure needs increase with every additional person that is shoehorned onto the South Fork. This includes water use, electricity, waste flow, and the traffic generated by the service personnel needed to keep it all tidy and in working order. And the impacts can extend far beyond the village boundaries. Think for a moment of the slow-moving “trade parade” of vehicles, which is now year round. Though some in real estate and those looking to profit from “flipping” ever-larger houses may disagree, limits are in everyone’s best interest over the long term.

Knowing Mr. Collum as we have for quite a few years, we can say with confidence that if he says something is a problem, it really is a problem. During a village board meeting on Feb. 5, he described residential rebuilding projects being taken to legal limits in terms of floor area and basements that defy the traditional understanding of the word, including some that extend out under lawns and driveways.

The village board plans to appoint an informal group to study the big-basement trend and perhaps write new rules to confront it. Central to the undertaking will be an honest look at just how many people and how much traffic the village can reasonably accommodate. The battle for preserving East Hampton Village may now be moving underground.

Of all the battles the East Hampton Town Trustees could be joining, the one in which a majority appears to be fighting for the right of bros to drink at Amagansett’s Indian Wells Beach is one on which they should have taken a pass.

If you are uncertain what bros means, the term comes from the millennial vernacular and describes young men who can put good times and camaraderie above common sense and courtesy. This is not to disparage the bros; in fact, we were them at one time too. The problem is that in summers past there have been too many at that particular beach and their alcohol-lubricated presence has made many longtime beachgoers feel unwelcome. The bros are fine; the beer not so much.

Over at Town Hall, there is a sense that a trial daytime alcohol ban put into place last August at Indian Wells should be revived for the coming summer. From what we hear, some trustees oppose the idea and may object. This feels misguided.

The trustees need to remember that this is not Daytona Beach at spring break. East Hampton is a second home to many of the voters who put the trustees in office, and their wish for a family-friendly, safe, and inviting beach must take precedence over what may be an anachronistic idea about liberty and the freedom to enjoy a beer wherever and whenever one wants. Maybe the trustees never actually saw Indian Wells in full swing, before the trial alcohol ban. We did on several occasions, and let us tell you, it was crazy and not all that nice to be around.

Frankly, it may be time for the town board to look at prohibiting alcohol on the Montauk beaches as well. Early morning there last summer often revealed unacceptable heaps of empty beer cans and other debris. And, as the trustees have said, clamp down at Indian Wells and the party will just move elsewhere.

Town officials, whether on Pantigo Road or in the trustees’ headquarters in the Lamb Building in Amagansett, must again ask in whose interest they should govern. Promoting daytime bacchanals on our glorious beaches is not of broad public benefit.