An announcement Monday by Suffolk Legislator Jay Schneiderman that he will not be a candidate for East Hampton Town supervisor comes as something of a disappointment. Knowing the headaches of the job all too well from his two terms in the post before winning a county seat, Mr. Schneiderman may well have been shrewd to opt out of a bid for the Republican nomination. This apparently leaves the local G.O.P. without an obvious choice since the incumbent supervisor, Bill Wilkinson, has not been screened by the committee and, in any event, appears unelectable, having only narrowly regained the post last year — by 15 votes — and then proceeded to continue his scorched-earth policies as if he had all the mandate in the world.

    It is likely that Mr. Schneiderman would have given the presumptive Democratic committee choice, Larry Cantwell, a meaningful challenge. Mr. Cantwell, a former town councilman and 30-year East Hampton Village administrator, has a far longer record of public service than Mr. Schneiderman. But Mr. Schneiderman, whose Town Hall years were distinguished by the absence of controversy, has no doubt gained experience and savvy in his six terms as a legislator. The exchange of ideas in a campaign between the men is likely to have been civil and at a level of credibility not seen recently.

    Either candidate, if victorious in November, would likely have been able to right the badly listing ship that is East Hampton Town government. A further example of how dysfunctional things have become emerged this week when the Suffolk Planning Commission cautioned those backing a harebrained scheme to change from residential to business the Cyril’s Fish House property and an adjacent vacant parcel on Napeague. The commission bluntly said that the shift would be illegal “spot zoning.” Making things worse, the vacant parcel is on the town’s preservation want-list and has a protected environmental classification. This echoes an ongoing controversy in which the town improperly dug a drainage pit on property in open defiance of the fact that the development rights had been bought by the county years ago. If nothing else, the outcome of a contest between Mr. Cantwell and Mr. Schneiderman would have been one in which steady competency was assured and these kind of debacles averted

    Faced with no obvious fall-back person, the town Republican committee would do well to take its time before settling on a candidate. As we have said in previous editorials, the challenges facing the next generation of men and women in Town Hall may be the greatest ever arrayed. These include coping with rising sea level, assuring groundwater and environmental protections, controlling development, managing growth, and reducing political influence on appointed boards. Oh, and don’t forget the public nuisance that East Hampton Airport continues to be.

    Only the best qualified people should be considered by the respective nominating committees. This very special place we call home deserves no less.

   Whether it is a petition in Montauk, pleading with the school board to increase the tax levy to keep class sizes small, or a parent uprising in East Hampton over the ouster of the elementary school principal, democracy in the districts is in good evidence this season, at least in the sense that the aggrieved have exercised their right to speak their minds. Not so among some school board members, who apparently think the position gives them the right, if not the obligation, to conduct important business in secret.

    In the matter of Gina Kraus, the well-liked principal of the John M. Marshall Elementary School, the East Hampton School Board president, George Aman, has repeatedly said  he cannot discuss the reasons behind a pending decision not to grant her tenure. His board, which is not alone in appearing to routinely stretch the state’s open government rules, may be stifled by a misperception that it is forbidden to say anything at all about Ms. Kraus or why she is apparently being returned to a teaching role. “It’s not that we are ignoring or not listening. It’s that we’re publicly forbidden to deal with these issues,” Mr. Aman said. But this, in short, is simply not true.

    According the New York State Committee on Open Government, records that are relevant to the performance of a public officer or employee (which Ms. Kraus certainly is) should be available. By this logic, factual details about Ms. Kraus pertaining to why she should not get tenure or remain on as principal must be disclosed. Put another way, records that shed light on her official duties are a matter of public interest and would not be an invasion of her privacy if shared. Under state law, a discussion of Ms. Kraus’s qualifications and performance can take place in an executive session portion of an otherwise open meeting, but the records and the facts on which the conversation may be based themselves are public.

    At a recent school board meeting, the East Hampton High School library was filled to overflowing with Ms. Kraus’s supporters. But, before they had a chance to speak, Mr. Aman and Richard Burns, the district superintendent, laid the ground rules: The audience could speak, but school officials would have nothing to say in response. Unfortunately, this left an untoward vacuum of the board’s and Mr. Burns’s making.

    There may be perfectly valid reasons for Ms. Kraus’s apparent demotion, but until the school board and the superintendent offer some clue about their thinking, suspicion and bitterness will linger.

   A milestone on the Congressional scene came to our attention recently: Loosely speaking, you can say the Democratic Caucus in the House of Representatives is majority minority. Of the 200 House Democrats, 147 were either African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, women, or gay. A Latino man, Rep. Xavier Becerra of California, heads the House Democratic Caucus.

    The 113th Congress is also the most diverse ever over all, with 81 black or Latino members, of which 74 are Democrats. There are 98 women in Congress, again, mostly Democrats, and 7 openly gay members, all Democrats. On the Republican side, much has been made of a few stars, notably Florida Senator Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants. But, counting numbers, Republicans are far whiter and more male than the Democrats, and they have work to do if they want to more closely reflect the composition of the country. But then again, so does Congress.

    Though the population of the United States is now more than a third minority, only 15 percent of the men and women in the two chambers identify themselves as other than non-Hispanic whites. Despite gains, women remain underrepresented, with only about 18 percent of the total in both Houses, even though they constituted about 51 percent of the national population in the 2010 Census.

    Locally, as Councilwoman Theresa Quigley pointed out in a February meeting of the East Hampton Town Board, there are few Latinos on any of the town’s appointed or elected boards. She put forward a Latino man and an African-American woman for positions on the licensing review board, but politics interfered and the nominations foundered. Whether these particular candidates were right for the posts we cannot say, but the general idea of getting more minority representation in Town Hall is an important one.

    As a whole, though, Americans can be proud of the progress in the House of Representatives and the example it sets for the rest of the nation.

   It has been easy to get swept up in the excitement surrounding the selection of a new leader for the Catholic Church. Though Argentina, where the new pope, Pope Francis, comes from, is far away, he seems one of our own, a man of the Americas, the son of immigrants to this hemisphere, as well as an important, if perhaps indirect, voice and role model for a growing number of Spanish-speaking Catholic residents in the United States as a whole, as well as here on the East End.

    At an installation Mass in Vatican City on Tuesday the new pope declared that the church must work to protect the poor, the weak, and the planet. In his homily, he said, “Let us be protectors of creation, protectors of God’s plan inscribed in nature, protectors of one another and of the environment.” His was a message that all of us, whether religious or secular, can support.

    As the head of a church that counts some 1.2 billion people as members, Pope Francis is in a unique position. His vast bully pulpit can be a force for great good in the world, and Catholics can be rightly proud of the direction their cardinals have chosen.

   The East Hampton Town Board is to hear from the public this evening about a proposed revision to existing taxi regulations. Under a law passed in 2011, the town requires a license to operate a taxi within its borders. The beefed-up provisions of the new law would require proof of insurance, fingerprinting and background checks of all drivers, and applications to be vetted by the Police Department. The law would also create a taxi review board.

    These additions to the town’s taxi law may be for the best, but where the proposal begins to raise questions is in a provision that would limit taxi licenses to companies and individuals with a physical address within the town. It would be difficult to come up with a parallel example in which the town similarly restricts commercial activity to residents alone. Building contractors, for example, must be licensed to work in the town, but they can hail from elsewhere.

    Furthermore, none of the proposed changes really addresses the taxi problem from the rider’s perspective. Out-of-town drivers are drawn here in the summer season by the prospect of making hundreds of dollars in a single night, shuttling revelers around on the party, share-house, and bar scenes. Even were taxi owners and individual drivers to obtain local business addresses, exorbitant prices would be likely to remain. This preys on those who have no other way home and creates a counterproductive incentive for those who might drive drunk instead.

    And there is another hitch: The new regulations would not cover taxis that pick up or discharge passengers across the town line. Under those circumstances, taxis are regulated by Suffolk County, which just last year gained the right to do so by an act of the State Legislature. It is not clear how East Hampton Town’s effort would dovetail with the county’s, or if, technically, it would even be legal.

    As proposed, the law would, in effect, create an improper monopoly for locally based livery companies while doing nothing to curb the sometimes outrageously high fares charged, especially for late-night rides. Although additional regulation appears warranted, East Hampton Town’s changes must be undertaken in concert with Suffolk’s authority and, foremost, with the right of passengers to a clean, safe, and affordable ride in mind.

   Verizon gets its bills to its customers on time. So do the Long Island Power Authority, your credit card company, and the people who supply home heating oil. So why did an unknown number of Town of East Hampton property taxpayers fail to get their bills at the end of the year? Answers have not been forthcoming. Nor does there appear to be much interest among town officials in figuring out what happened and how to prevent a similar mistake in the future.

    Here is how the system is supposed to work: Once the 2013 budget is approved in November, tax bills are prepared, and then sent out. As it has in the past, the town hired an outside company to take care of the mailings. First-half payments were due without penalty by Jan. 10. The bills went out of the town offices between Dec. 14 and 19, according to Len Bernard, the town’s budget officer. However, somewhere along the line, either at the mailing company, Town Hall, or the post offices, something went amiss. A number of bills arrived late or never showed up at all, even at addresses to which bills had been posted successfully in prior years.

    The official reaction, that there had been no “noticeable” drop in tax payments, misses the point. If first-half taxes went unpaid until mid-May, for example, when the rest of the bill comes due, the taxpayer would incur a 5-percent penalty, real money for most people. Most property owners probably know that payments are due twice annually, but for those accustomed to receiving tax bills, reminders in the mail are all but essential.

    Town officials should take this lapse seriously, learn what went wrong, and change the way mailings are handled in the future, if necessary.

   A new package of laws written in response to the Sandy Hook school shootings was making its way rapidly to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s desk this week. The hastily prepared rules would tighten New York State’s already-tough gun laws, putting further restrictions on so-called assault weapons and providing law enforcement with procedures to take firearms away from some people deemed mentally ill.

    An expanded state ban on rapid-fire weapons and large-capacity ammunition clips might reduce the death toll in extremely unlikely mass shootings, but it would do nothing about the almost run-of-the-mill shootings that take place in the state’s cities and rural areas. Moreover, New York already is among the states with the lowest number of firearm deaths per capita. According to the Violence Policy Center, which advocates for gun control, only New Jersey, Hawaii, and Massachusetts had fewer. The states with higher rates of gun ownership had higher rates of gun-related deaths.

    While dramatic and headline-grabbing, Albany’s effort will probably do little to reduce gun violence. What would do so is a long-term approach to reducing the number of firearms in the state over a period of 10, 20, even 30 years. Unfortunately, any state effort will be at best only a half-measure without national action.

    New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has emerged as a leader of the gun-control movement, presented a plan at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland recently to reduce firearm violence. His ideas include thorough background checks, making illegal gun trafficking a federal offense, and limiting assault weapons and clips.

    These steps, while sensible, fail to make a priority of reducing the sheer number of guns — both legal and illegal — in this country. The statistics are unarguable: The more armed a state’s populace, the greater the chances its residents will die from firearm injuries. Measures that do not over time draw down the innumerable private arsenals tucked away in closets, gun safes, and under beds through buy-backs and other measures will only prolong the killing.

   The South Fork’s “mutual aid” system, in which the various local ambulance services back one another up in the event that a squad cannot be mobilized, was called into question recently after a 97-year-old man injured in a fall waited for more than 20 minutes in the rain. This example is not the only time a victim has waited what seems like a long time for a ride to the hospital.

    Emergency service providers have long been aware that their all-volunteer corps are increasingly stretched thin. The number of calls has risen each year, while the number of emergency medical technicians has not. There is concern that the aging baby boom population will put new and additional pressure on ambulance services. On top of this, those at summer resorts, day-trip attractions, and share houses expect the volunteers to be there when they call for help.

    The ambulance companies and associations from Bridgehampton to Montauk are well aware of the demands upon them. Their leaders are said to have been in an ongoing dialogue about whether changes are needed. East Hampton Village Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. has said that something must be done. This is an important conversation to have, literally a matter of life and death.

   In years past, it was the Town of East Hampton that led the way among local governments in providing affordable, or so-called work-force, housing for its residents. Now East Hampton Village is finding a way to inch into this role. The first step, though it appears minor, could actually be significant over time and make a meaningful addition to the stock of reasonably priced rental apartments in the village.

    On Jan. 18, the village board approved a change to the zoning code that will eliminate an onerous fee that otherwise has been sought from those who would develop or convert buildings to apartments in the centralized business districts. Applicants were asked to pay the village $10,000 for every parking space deemed necessary that they couldn’t provide. The cost was an obvious disincentive for property owners to create apartments; although second-floor residential rentals were permitted, few were built. The revision allows the fee to be waived on a case-by-case basis, giving the zoning board of appeals the responsibility.

    One of the possible, if unspoken, upsides of the change is that it could help steer new affordable housing toward the central commercial centers, where essential services, food, entertainment, and public transportation are available. By contrast, most of the Town of East Hampton’s affordable residential projects have been dispersed, adding to the number of cars on the roads rather than diminishing it.

    The irony is that East Hampton Village erred long ago by allowing the conversion of second-story apartments to offices, retail spaces, and the like. This measure would reverse this mistake, if one small project at a time.

   The great scramble to spend will begin in earnest now, following Monday’s passage in the United States Senate of a $50.5 billion aid package for areas hit by late October’s Hurricane Sandy. The challenge is to make sure the money will be used in a sensible manner and with the long term in mind. In East Hampton and elsewhere along the coast, with pledges to rebuild houses, businesses, and infrastructure, the outlook is not good.  

    What would be key as local, county, and state leaders look at the path ahead is to consider how to mitigate potential dangers based on the best available science and technical advice. The impulse to rebuild and defend after a natural disaster is understandable, but this defiant approach may not be the right one. To endure for generations, coastal communities must prepare for more and stronger storms, as well as rising sea levels, which means we all need to rethink how we live along the shore. So far, the necessary mental adjustment has not taken place. In fact, the promise of piles of federal dollars may put the inevitable day of reckoning further off.

    It is critical to remember that Hurricane Sandy was only a Category 1 storm, and that Irene, which passed through the region in 2011, was a tropical storm by the time it made landfall here. By contrast, the Great New England Hurricane of 1938 was estimated to be of Category 3 strength, and it carried a tsunami-like surge of water far in excess of any seen here during Sandy. We also must not forget winter northeasters, which, because they can stick around for 24 hours or more, can produce hurricane-style erosion. 

    Unfortunately, East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson has been preaching what amounts to a false dichotomy between an environmental perspective and the needs of commercial property owners, particularly in Montauk. This shows that like many other elected officials he simply doesn’t get it.

    Our economic vitality is inextricably linked to the area’s environment. To consider them at odds is more than misguided; it is irresponsible. The landward movement of the shoreline is inevitable. Retreat from the brink would not damage business interests. On the contrary, it is the only long-term way to be certain that the economy will thrive for decades to come. Lest one think that short-sightedness is limited to just one political party, Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat, declared, “We are now just a presidential pen stroke away from beginning the rebuilding process in earnest.”

    The federal bill is lopsided in favor of the status-quo. Some $16 billion will go to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, $11 billion for shelter and utility costs from Sandy and other storms, and $10 billion for New York and New Jersey transit systems. Projects with an eye beyond immediate rebuilding are the stepchildren and will have to compete for a share of a mere $1 billion set aside for the Army Corps of Engineers.

    Given the distribution of funding in the Sandy bill, as well as the ongoing federal budget debacle, counting on an unending stream of federal dollars for sand replenishment at Montauk is a sucker’s bet. Far more sensible, if nearly impossible politically, would be to seek funding to reduce the number and density of shorefront structures through relocation and/or condemnation while creating a dune line to protect the remaining properties.

    A plan for the South Fork that does not include retreat as an option cannot be considered complete. Likewise, officials across the region must resist the temptation to spend first, plan later.