Privatize the Long Island Power Authority? That was the take-away message from the Moreland Commission, which had been asked by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to assess the utility’s preparation for and response to Hurricane Sandy. Not so fast, Long Islanders should be saying.

    Governor Cuomo appears to favor scrapping the public-private LIPA and replacing it with a wholly independent utility company answerable to state regulators, according to news reports. Kathleen Rice, the Nassau County district attorney who was a member of the Moreland Commission, said the leading alternative, reconfiguring the utility, would not gain ratepayers’ favor. The third course mapped by the commission — and perhaps the least-popular among officials — would be to to allow the New York Power Authority to take over.

    There is no question that LIPA was unprepared for Hurricane Sandy and, as a consequence, was unable to speedily restore electricity to many customers. A 2006 study commissioned by the utility itself identified striking deficiencies in its storm plans. LIPA had a trial run after 2010’s Hurricane Irene, but failed afterward to take adequate corrective steps.

    Part of the blame must rest with the governor. Despite two years in Albany, Mr. Cuomo has left open four of the nine seats on the LIPA board of trustees, although he can appoint members. If, as many observers agree, oversight was lacking, there can be no excuse for not filling these positions regardless of whether he believes the utility is fatally flawed.

    If privatization were to work, as the commission said, it would have to be within a highly structured regulatory framework developed with consumers’ best interests in mind. But even then control would be at a remove and filtered through a corporation that answered first to shareholders and Wall Street. Considering this, the third option, putting Long Island’s electric service under the New York Power Authority, might be the best choice for all of us who ultimately pay the bills.

   An increasingly popular idea among the owners of oceanfront properties on Long Island has been to organize into tax districts to fund erosion-protection measures, such as pumping millions of tons of sand onto narrowed beaches. For these property owners, the districts may seem attractive, but they may well delay the day of reckoning along the coasts at a time when a more flexible response to rising sea level is needed — one that would not almost guarantee that United States taxpayers would be asked to pony up to protect coastal vacation properties.

    Some eastern Southampton Town property owners are eager to establish a district like that in place in the Village of West Hampton Dunes; they are pushing the Town of Southampton to get a move on and schedule a hearing. However, at a post-Sandy meeting recently, one of the Bridgehampton organizers of the proposed tax district said cost estimates were rising sharply and that the district might have to ask for state or federal financial help.

    Governments with the power to levy and collect taxes on behalf of property owners are eligible, at least hypothetically, for funding from Albany and Washington. And there you have both the attraction and the problem with tax districts. It’s great for property owners, but not so hot for a country struggling to get out of recession and bring deficits under control.

    Pumping sand onto beaches is expensive. A first run at bolstering beaches in Sagaponack and Bridgehampton was priced in the neighborhood of $24 million. The huge cost — and the likely need for federal dollars — is something to consider with regard to eastern Southampton. It is also a consideration for a now-proposed downtown Montauk beach-nourishment district. In asking to establish a tax district in Montauk, proponents will tell you just how important Montauk’s motels and residential properties are for the local economy. This may be so, but as a famous actor once said, “Show me the money.”

    In the long run, it would probably be far less expensive for properties in at-risk zones to be purchased and returned to a natural state than for taxpayers at large to be asked to help pay to keep seasonally inhabited buildings where they should never have been built in the first place.

   Reports of a die-off elsewhere notwithstanding, this season’s East Hampton scallop harvest has been another for the record books. Not only are these succulent shellfish abundant here, some of the individuals are huge, with shucked meats exceeding an inch and a half in length. This is good news for local harvesters and gourmands, and a significant turnaround from the situation only a few years ago when scallops were so few and far between that the commercial harvest was essentially halted. From about 1985, a series of so-called “brown tide” algae blooms devastated the scallop population, forcing some baymen off the water for good.

    A simple explanation for the scallops’ resurgence is difficult to come by. One important factor has been the combined efforts of several shellfish hatcheries, including one run by the Town of East Hampton and another by Cornell Cooperative Extension in Southold Town, which restocked many bays and harbors.

    All is not well, however. Ominous news in the form of widespread mortality in some parts of the Peconic Estuary came in the fall. A different algae bloom had been cited, though a firm cause remains unknown. And state officials recently added to the list of South Fork water bodies considered impaired by nitrogen pollution, which can contribute to algal blooms. Failing septic systems are a huge problem here, and as sea level rise slowly inundates low-lying areas, maintaining and/or improving water quality will be a challenge.

    Some years ago, we wrote in a spirit of hope that scallops might someday be restored — a canary in our coal mine, if you pardon the stretched metaphor. Now that recent local harvests bode well, we must press elected officials for a commitment to keeping scallops — and all other indigenous marine life — a top priority.

   The war on evidence-based policy-making being waged by some in the House of Representatives continued this week, with three members in the running to become chairman of the important Committee on Space, Science, and Technology. Each is deeply skeptical of the widely held belief that human activities are a cause of global warming. Barring an unexpected reversal, either Representative Dana Rohrabacher of California, F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin, or Lamar Smith of Texas will head the committee, which, among other things, shares control of federal spending on almost all nondefense research and development.

    Even if you happen to think that climate change is a hoax, the nomination of three people whose scientific credentials are shaky at best to head this committee should be alarming. The committee has influence over the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, among many others.

    The problem is that Mr. Rohrabacher and the others apparently find it easy to side with the relative handful of climate change deniers, rather than accept the mountain of evidence that scientists the world over say points to humankind’s role in warming the planet. If their pick-and-choose approach to scientific research extends to areas of inquiry other than climate, any of the three would seem to be a poor choice to help run the government’s civilian research and development efforts. They are not alone among Congressional Republicans with a dim view of science; Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, for example, recently sidestepped a question about the Earth’s age — pegged at 4.5 billion years based on rigorous, verifiable data — and mused that it was one of the “great mysteries.”

    Critics have said the United States is falling behind other countries in preparing young people for careers in math and science and, as a result, it may soon see its global dominance fade. Putting forward candidates like these to head this vital committee does not bode well for the country’s future — or the world’s.

   A story that appeared in this newspaper last week, detailing the frustrations two lawyers have had trying to pry public documents out of East Hampton Town Hall, tells only part of the story. Compliance locally with New York State’s Freedom of Information and Open Meetings Laws is spotty at best, and the town is hardly the only entity with trouble keeping up.

    The problem is twofold: Many officials are reluctant to let the public in on the sometimes messy business of government, and the law itself is toothless, without sanctions or fines — or any consequences whatsoever — for those who fail to meet its requirements.

    Consider, for example, what would happen if speed limits were not backed up with the threat of fines. It is pretty easy to guess what the roads would be like if motorists tore around without fear of repercussion. Many public officials are like these hypothetical lead-foots, ignoring the law as they please, whether because of lethargy or indifference, or because they never bothered to inform themselves of the rules.

    The Town of East Hampton appears to be the biggest offender locally when it comes to failure to respond to Freedom of Information Law, or FOIL, requests for documents. Rather than hand over copies of public records sought by lawyers, the media, or residents, or provide a valid reason why they are being withheld, officials just don’t do anything. Short of heading to court to get an injunction forcing an answer, those making requests have no recourse. The most obvious fault lies with the town’s legal department headed by John Jilnicki, which should be the agency helping provide access under the law, not hindering it.

    Similarly, the state’s rules on so-called executive sessions are frequently bent, if not broken. In a guarded statement earlier this year, Robert Freeman, the head of the state’s Committee on Open Government, faulted the East Hampton Town Board for improperly meeting behind closed doors. In particular, Mr. Freeman cited a discussion of whether or not to sell some town-owned property in Montauk, which, he said, should have been conducted in public. Exemptions to the rule that all discussions are to be held in open session are strictly limited. In the case of real estate transactions, closed-door sessions are allowed only when disclosure would substantially affect the sale price.

    The East Hampton Town Board is not alone, however. Until recently, the town planning board would often get together for drinks after the night’s meeting was done. If a majority were there, it was an illegal meeting no matter whether they discussed pro sports or the latest site plan applications.

    School boards routinely put executive sessions onto their schedules, to be held an hour or so in advance of ordinary meetings. Not so fast, Mr. Freeman has said. Executive sessions can only be held after a public vote by a majority of a board’s members. Therefore, he said, it is impossible to schedule such sessions beforehand, not knowing what the outcome of the required vote would be. Furthermore, and as troubling, is the frequent abuse of the Open Meetings Law’s requirement that the subject of closed sessions be identified in advance and in reasonable detail (the frequently cited “personnel” excuse is not adequate).

    Any correction would have to come from Albany in the form of some mechanism to assure that officials comply. Without consequences, these laws are simply too easy to ignore.

   The Town of East Hampton’s sewage treatment plant, even back when it was operational, is hardly the sole — or even most important — source of groundwater pollution here. That distinction falls on the town’s roughly 20,000 private cesspools or septic systems. The Springs-Fireplace Road plant, however, is highly visible and has become a pawn in an ongoing political battle over property taxes.

    By a divided vote earlier this year, the East Hampton Town Board agreed to pay for a long-term wastewater management plan. Each of the four companies vying to do the study said that no matter what happens to the now mothballed plant, the town will continue to be plagued by septic waste. The East Hampton Budget and Finance Committee, which has reviewed the firms’ proposals, concurs.

    Getting a clear idea of the actual number and quality of these many, many private systems, many of which probably are not shown on property surveys, will be a gigantic task, but one that must be completed before a long-term decision can be made about how to minimize the environmental and health risks. This will cost money — lots of it — whether or not the treatment plant is ever put back in working order. Knowing the enemy — decentralized sources of water pollution — is the central challenge to finding a way to defeat it.

   For the Town of East Hampton, a request from a Napeague property owner to change the zoning of the land on which the summertime traffic nuisance called Cyril’s Fish House sits amounts to an existential challenge.

    From the property owner’s perspective, seeking permission to legalize a host of additions on the property, improve septic conditions, and add parking spaces makes sense. The land’s classification as residential makes Cyril’s what is known as pre-existing and nonconforming. This means that while its operation cannot be summarily shut down by the town on land-use grounds, neither can it be expanded or improved without being subjected to hypothetically stringent site-plan review.

    The town’s decision on this is not yet known. The planning board, asked to review an application for a change of zone that would make Cyril’s a conforming use, split 3-3. The final say now rests with the East Hampton Town Board, which would have to schedule a hearing — though it also has the option to decline consideration altogether. Two reasons why town should not proceed any further are how Cyril’s Fish House has been operated historically and how a zone change would set a potentially disastrous precedent.

    At this point there are probably few residents who have not at some point driven by Cyril’s on a hot summer day and been disturbed, if not shocked. Traffic in both directions slows to a creep well before the restaurant comes into view. Vehicles of patrons are parked for a quarter mile or more to the east and west. Then, as one gets nearer, taxis are stacked up or double-parked and hundreds of people are clustered in the gravel by an outside bar, frozen drinks and beers in hand. This goes on well into the sunset.

    A couple of years ago, a pickup truck struck a woman crossing the highway to get to Cyril’s and, in an unrelated incident somewhat more recently, a driver involved in a road-rage confrontation wound up flipping his vehicle off the road’s edge instead of plowing into the crowd. In the early morning, empty plastic cups and other litter is seen strewn along the highway, along with the odd vehicle or two of people who found other ways home. Last summer, the East Hampton Town police began posting emergency no-parking signs nearby, hoping to reduce the risk of harm to drivers, pedestrians, and bar-goers alike.

    Just why this growing eyesore, probable environmental risk, and seasonal traffic nightmare has been allowed to persist is anyone’s guess. The town should have done something about it long ago, but, as with other commercial ventures here, especially when they have strong ties to a local political committee, the tendency is to look the other way, even though much of the money that changes hands there heads straight out of town come fall.

    The town code was drafted in a way that acknowledges pre-existing restaurants, rooming houses, and the like on property zoned for residences but in the hope that they would disappear over time, or at least not be made larger, or, in the parlance of planning and zoning, more nonconforming. In practice, however, top town officials have again and again ignored this aspect of the law, standing by while the Building Department handed out permits on the scantiest of supporting documentation, for example, or simply not reacting when certain businesses are expanded without any permission at all, as at the Montauk Beach House and former Reform Club in Amagansett.

    Cyril’s, which has been cited dozens of times for code violations but never been required to correct them, would see most if not all of its alleged transgressions erased if the town board agreed to change its zoning. This would be an unconscionable reward for a venture that has been ignoring the law for so long, and a signal to others that the rules need not necessarily apply if you really know how to play the game.

   Most of our daughter Evvy’s Hanukkah presents were stolen Saturday night. The wrapped gifts had been in the back of her grandparents’ car, in a big box to be taken to New York City on Sunday for a party at an aunt and uncle’s place on Riverside Drive.

    For an 8-year-old already having a rough couple of weeks coming to grips with some of the world’s more bitter truths, the theft was a significant blow. Evvy has been more apprehensive than normal, asking questions about the probability that a mass extinction might strike the Earth as it did during the epoch of the dinosaurs, or that a tidal wave could hit Amagansett, that sort of thing.

    That the credit card company said it would reimburse us for the cost of the stolen items made little difference to her. They were her presents, and the fact that someone else now had them left her in tears. As parents, it was a silver lining for us perhaps that the feelings were not for the objects that were lost. Rather, it was the injustice of it all that seemed to matter to her.

    This is, I suppose, how many of us reacted to the news of the Sandy Hook killings in Connecticut on Friday. I, and no one I have come in contact with, knew any of the children or faculty and administrators shot that terrible day. And yet the injustice leaves us with tears in our eyes and a gulf in the heart. Twenty-six memorial Christmas trees were put up at the Hook Mill in East Hampton Village on Monday; I’m certain I was not alone choking up as I saw them the following morning on my way to work.

    So far Evvy does not know about the Connecticut horror, though it is just a matter of time before something of the news will filter to her. Lisa and I have responded to Evvy’s other fears by assuring her that nothing like those events she fears is going to happen — no meteors, no earthquakes. And yet, as we take the role of soothing parents, in the back of our minds is the terrible reality.

    Evvy’s Hanukkah presents, now mostly replaced during a stop at a mall, are a minor matter in the scheme of things, and for the time being, as parents, we would rather keep it that way. She doesn’t need to know the rest — not yet.

   Though an endorsement in these pages would appear to be unnecessary, East Hampton Village’s plan to create a timber-framed structure historic designation is a worthy concept. The measure appears headed for approval, perhaps as early as tomorrow’s meeting.

    The village already has a historic district, which controls certain exterior changes on some properties. The new program would protect important buildings outside the district from destruction and major alterations. In exchange, it would promise owners incentives in the form of “bonuses” that would allow them to build larger accessory structures than would ordinarily be allowed on the same properties.

    According to Robert Hefner, who helped prepare the proposed law as director of historic services for the village, the measure would make it the first municipality in New York State to couple preservation with such a sweetener. The deal is a worthwhile concession. There might be circumstances in the future, however, when such arrangements would be impossible; in those circumstances, the village should not consider itself required to offer other trade-offs.

    Much of the charm of the village, not to overlook its apparently ever-swelling real estate values, is wrapped up in its appearance, particularly in the green that runs from Town Pond to Buell Lane lined by ancient houses. Some are said to date to the late 17th century and are already in the historic district. The new designation would extend protection of 25 other structures’ rare character and should be approved.

    East Hampton Town is another story. It has let its enforcement of historic-district rules wither, and no new preservation measures appear in the offing. We hope Town Hall is watching Village Hall’s fine example.

   If the East Hampton Town Board had set out to appoint a potentially unproductive committee to chart erosion policy for the future, it certainly succeeded at a meeting on Dec. 4.

    Among the group of 10 people, three run Montauk waterfront hotels, one sells real estate, and another operates an earth-moving business. Two are members of the town board: one a lawyer and property-rights stalwart, the other a builder. Two hail from local environmental groups. You get the picture.

     This is not to say that the views of the members of  this committee should be ignored. It is simply that a different, more measured approach would be necessary to gain an unbiased assessment of the town’s existing shoreline laws and whether they are adequate and in the best interest of the East Hampton population as a whole — beachgoers as well as those on whom fortune has smiled.

    After roughly a decade of work, the Town of East Hampton had its own detailed coastal hazard plan approved by Albany in 2007, and by the United States Office of Ocean and Coastal Resources Management the following year. This allowed the town to take over from the state most regulation of responses to erosion. At the time, we had doubts about the wisdom of handing such politically charged work over to local elected officials. Now, that concern appears to be borne out.

    East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, whose close ally, Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, urged the creation of the new committee, has several times told town employees to go ahead and violate local and state regulations when waters have threatened private property. At the Dec. 4 meeting, Mr. Wilkinson remarked that the town’s overarching coastal policy law was merely a “snapshot in time.” Presumably, he meant it could be rewritten under cover of the new committee.

    As scientific predictions about the pace of sea-level rise are becoming better understood it is reasonable that the town, villages, and other shoreline communities take a good look at their response planning and determine whether changes are needed. This can only be meaningful if the review is undertaken by professionals with the best credentials. Long Island has no shortage of universities whose talent could be tapped to produce a comprehensive analysis. Only when that was done would the opinions of ordinary citizens and stakeholders, such as beachfront property owners, be appropriate and valuable.

    The new committee is certainly going to reconsider the Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan. But before doing so it should call for and oversee a professional analysis. Any group challenged to consider changes in erosion-control policy should include people with deep personal interests in the shoreline. But it should not, at the outset, be dominated by those for whom one particular outcome is a foregone conclusion.