New Yorkers can be proud that their state helped pave the way for the ground-shifting announcement by President Obama on May 9 that gay and lesbian couples should be able to get married if they want to.

    The Empire State legalized gender-blind marriage last summer, after years of struggle. Albany’s accomplishment was remarkable in that although it took precipitous machinations to make it law, New Yorkers supported it by a comfortable margin. Only about a third of the state’s residents expressed outright opposition.

    Americans are now being bombarded by a blizzard of polling and political analyses about how Mr. Obama’s revolutionary message will or will not play in the November election. This speculative frenzy is not a surprise, but it obscures the key measure of this important moment — even if the president’s decision to announce his change of thinking now was motivated by politics.

    Mr. Obama’s belated admission of this basic right follows the leadership of New York and other progressive states. As many have said before, no government should have a place in telling its citizens whom they should or should not marry.

   Voters go the polls Tuesday in their respective school districts for the first time since a state law mandating a 2-percent cap on year-to-year tax levy increases has been in effect. As a result of tough cuts by school budget committees, this is a very different year as far as spending is concerned from those in recent memory.

    The lessons of the Albany-ordered parsimony are many, but chief among them may be that double-digit annual budget increases are a thing of the past. It was not all that long ago that administrators and the board of education in one South Fork school district were patting themselves on the back for keeping a budget hike to 9 percent. Now all but one local district — Amagansett — will put budgets to the voters Tuesday while keeping under the cap. This shows that fiscal restraint can be achieved — apparently and unfortunately only when discipline is imposed from above.

    One year does not a success make, however. Looking ahead a few more years, the 2-percent cap, which is not expected to keep pace with inflation or cope with increases in enrollment, may prove onerous. Voters, like those in Amagansett, would have to approve a budget by a two-thirds supermajority to go above the limit. That kind of support would be difficult for almost any district.

    More leadership will be needed from Albany as schools begin to suffer from permanently diminished funding. Administrative consolidation, as well as shared purchasing consortiums, appears necessary. But there will have to be more in wage concessions, pension reform, and even program changes.

    As important as education is to the future of this country, taxpayers can no longer afford any often unchecked bureaucracies. The fact that most of the state’s districts kept within the 2-percent cap demonstrates that bare-knuckled reform is possible. The real test, however, will be doing so over the long term without academic implosion, which would put New York’s public school students at a substantial disadvantage.  

   With sandwich-making competitions a la Dagwood Bumstead, the English village of Sandwich is celebrating the 250th anniversary this year of the moment Sir Edward Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, ordered his beef served between slices of bread so he would not have to interrupt his game of cribbage. According to village lore, the others around the gaming table began to order “the same as Sandwich,” and a multibillion-dollar industry was spawned.

    Sandwich is near the sea in County Kent, about an hour’s drive east of the county seat of Maidstone and two hours from the town of Portsmouth (almost exactly the same distance, oddly, as between Sandwich, Mass., and Portsmouth, N.H.). Legend has it that when the first Montagu was offered a peerage he could have decided to become Earl of Portsmouth — in which case we’d all be eating Portsmouths for lunch — but picked Sandwich instead because it was the premier seaport in England at the time. Over the centuries, however, nature has done what it will, and the village now lies a mile and a half inland from the coast.

    A hundred years after the first earl made his historic choice, his descendant, that same card-playing Edward Montagu, as First Lord of the Admiralty, sponsored the South Seas voyages of Captain Cook, who named the Sandwich Islands after him. We call them Hawaii now.

    Speaking of sandwiches, there was a lawsuit in Boston in 2006 in which a court ended a food fight between the Panera Bread Company and Qdoba Mexican Grill by ruling that a “sandwich” includes at least two slices of bread, not just one, as in tacos, burritos, or quesadillas. Panera, which has a popular branch on the South Fork, had a no-compete clause in its lease saying that no other sandwich shop could open in its shopping mall.

    This is probably why you cannot find a Mexican food shop any place in the Bridgehampton Commons.

   Given all the ink that has been spilled over the Surf Lodge’s problems with some of its neighbors and the Town of East Hampton, we are hesitant to add more, yet to judge from the Memorial Day weekend crowds, more will need to be done to seek compliance with local laws there and at some other successful social spots.

    The Surf Lodge, whose new ownership has pledged a kinder and gentler summer 2012, is far from alone. Indeed, a new wave of Montauk watering holes has opened, seeking a piece of the once-quiet easternmost hamlet’s exploding popularity. At the same time, old standbys have been experiencing swelling numbers of patrons.

    Perhaps the most troublesome case is Cyril’s on Napeague, where upward of an estimated 500 people mobbed the property Saturday and Sunday afternoon and evening, tying up traffic on Montauk Highway in both directions and putting patrons and motorists alike at risk. A local resident with a connection to the Driftwood resort across the road told us this week that he considered the situation a “deathtrap.”

    Perhaps because Montauk Highway is a state road, local officials have been hesitant to act on this disaster-in-the-making. They should not be; for example, when East Hampton Village was displeased with opening-night tumult at a restaurant on a stretch of the state highway within its borders, its police chief almost instantly invoked emergency public-safety powers and temporarily banned parking there overnight. The state soon followed his lead, installing no-standing signs. By contrast, Town of East Hampton officials seem to make noncommittal clucking noises as complaints come in, then avert their eyes.

    Like many operations that might be considered trouble spots, the Surf Lodge, Cyril’s, and Ruschmeyer’s, which also has become a hot spot in Montauk, are on residentially zoned land. This means certain rules and expectations should apply, including that surrounding residents should not have to bear the traffic, noise, litter, and attendant dramas of someone else’s commercial success. It may seem hard to reconcile Cyril’s location on a busy highway with residential zoning, but the situation demands that reasonable — and safe — restrictions be imposed. Unfortunately, a proposal drafted by Town Councilwoman Theresa Quigley missed the mark in figuring out how to do so.

    Under Ms. Quigley’s proposal, which has been tentatively set aside for the time being, out-of-place operations would gain further legitimacy with the gift of a set-in-stone capacity number of persons allowed to occupy their properties. As drafted, a calculation would give property owners the right to have up to almost 3,000 people outdoors at a bar or restaurant anywhere in town with a half-acre of usable grounds. (Cyril’s two parcels total just over an acre.) The correct course would be for the town to issue revocable commercial-mass-gathering permits for all outdoor activities by businesses in residential zones that regularly attract more than a couple dozen patrons. Those permits are only demanded now for commercial use of public spaces.

    East Hampton Town has areas where day and night happy hours are welcome, with ample parking, street lights, and few occupied nearby houses — the central business districts. According to town law, pre-existing, nonconforming businesses in residential zones are supposed to go away over time, not grow. It is high time those in authority took notice of this. No one should have to hate their hometown on summer weekends.

   In East Hampton last weekend, standing next to a car parked by the side of Accabonac Road, a very young woman was seen crying. A few drivers had pulled off the road and were clustered worriedly around her, some consulting their cellphones. A man who’d come out of his house to investigate and gone back in to get a map was squinting at it, frowning.

    The young woman looked up as a newcomer approached. “Do you live around here?” she blurted. “Do you happen to know where Lily Street is?”

    “Lily? Do you mean Lilla? There’s a Lilla Lane in Springs.”

    “No, Lily. Lily Street, East Hampton. Number eight, Lily Street.”

    It emerged that she’d answered an Internet ad for an every-other-weekend summer share. After talking by phone with a man who told her he’d rented a seven-bedroom house “near everything” and was subletting it at very low prices, not so much to make money as “just to get a free summer,” she’d sent a check for $1,000 to a post office box number and driven out from Passaic, N.J., full of anticipation — only to find herself the victim of a vacation rental scam. There is no such place as Lily Street in East Hampton Town, not according to Hagstrom’s Atlas of Suffolk County and not on Google Maps either, which this credulous young woman somehow seemed never to have heard of.

    Online ads for low-cost rentals in sought-after locations like the South Fork proliferate at this time of year, sometimes accompanied by photos of attractive houses. The victim arrives to find the location doesn’t exist, or the house looks nothing like the one in the picture, or the people who actually live there haven’t a clue what she’s going on about.

    People who fall for vacation-rental scams tend to be young and footloose. The elderly and houseproud, on the other hand, are the preferred targets of another breed of seasonal scammers, door-to-door workmen offering various home-improvement services. Often, especially now at the start of summer, they’ll point out minor cracks in a driveway and suggest repairs — always, for one or another plausible reason, at bargain-basement rates. By the time a hard rain washed away their useless mix of black paint and motor oil they would be gone, but their scam lives on, and will continue to, as long as common sense vanishes when what looks like a steal walks in. Caveat emptor, and have a happy summer.

   The portrait of East Hampton Town painted in a new lawsuit is sharply unflattering — and may ring familiar among those who have been close observers over the last few years. A 2009 decision by the East Hampton Town Board to shut down an auto repair business in a Montauk residential neighborhood is at the center of the case. The suit alleges that the way in which a plan was approved to seize vehicles and tools belonging to the business owner, Tom Ferreira, deprived him of due process in the courts and demonstrated a willful ignorance of state law.

    All of the town board members who agreed to hire a waste-removal firm to remove Mr. Ferreira’s things — without a warrant — from the Navy Road property are from a prior administration. They are named in the lawsuit, as is John Jilnicki, the top East Hampton Town attorney then and now, as well as an ordinance enforcement officer, and a town police lieutenant, who are also still on the job. If the allegations are correct, they will have a lot to answer for.

    For some of Mr. Ferreira’s neighbors, the repair shop at the edge of Fort Pond Bay was an eyesore and an aggravation. But, as vexing as the operation may have been, especially to some who may have been concerned about the value of their nearby properties, it apparently was legal.

    According to a draft of the suit, which was to be filed today, Mr. Jilnicki was present as the town board conducted an illegal, closed-door meeting that resulted in the June 2009 seizure. As a result of decisions made at the improperly called executive session, the suit alleges, the town board, led by then-Supervisor Bill McGintee, took the role of judge and jury, violating the United States Constitution’s prohibiting of nonjudicial officials acting in lieu of the courts. The suit also alleges that the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments, guaranteeing protection from unreasonable search and seizure and assuring due process, were violated. Taking part in the 2009 session, according to the draft, were Pat Mansir, Brad Loewen, Julia Prince, and Pete Hammerle, members of the town board, as well as a now former town lawyer, Madeleine Narvilas.

    Among those harboring resentment against Mr. Ferreira, the draft alleges, were Lisa Grenci, then the vice chairwoman of the East Hampton Town Democratic Committee and head of the Montauk citizens advisory committee and on the town litter committees. Mr. McGintee, along with three of the four other members of the board, had won election as Democrats. Ms. Grenci’s husband, Thomas Grenci, a town police lieutenant, also is named in the suit, as are several people who no longer work for the town.

    According to the allegations, Mr. Jilnicki and Ms. Narvilas failed to tell the town board about what might have been exculpatory evidence and tried to strong-arm a town fire marshal into altering a report in order to build a case against Mr. Ferreira. Further, the suit alleges, Kenneth Glogg, a town enforcement officer who had cited Mr. Ferreira multiple times in 2008 and 2009, did not have proper authorization to do so under state law.

    In a key statement, the draft alleges that Mr. Jilnicki and Ms. Narvilas “used their dual role as criminal prosecutor in the East Hampton Town Justice Courts and as civil attorney for the town to extort affirmative action” by Mr. Ferreira before allowing his case to reach a judicial conclusion. The suit says that when he refused to agree to the terms they sought, they told the board it was appropriate to seize his property — reportedly worth nearly $100,000 in all — wrongly characterizing it as “litter.” The courts will now decide whether the town’s allegedly warrantless and extra-judicial response was justified.

    The law, to have any value, must protect the rights of all, including those for whom others may have animosity. If the suit’s claims hold up, it is deeply disappointing that the town’s top lawyer was embroiled in what appears to be a case of one branch of government overreaching its authority.

   Round about this time of year, if you look among the tide lines on the beaches here, you begin to notice the balloons. Mylar or latex, they wash up with such regularity that in early summer they, and the colored ribbons with which they once were held down, are the dominant non-natural trash.

    School graduations bring with them outdoor parties from which these helium-filled trifles escape. They rise until they burst in the atmosphere, then drift back to earth, many landing in the bay or ocean. There, they are sometimes eaten by sea creatures such as marine turtles, causing death in some circumstances. Equally significant but less well known, the Guardian newspaper reported earlier this year, some research facilities may soon have to reduce operations or close entirely because we are frittering away the world’s limited supplies of helium on party balloons.

    Suffolk bans the intentional release of large quantities of helium balloons. A similar bill has been, ahem, floating around Albany. While it is pending, readers may want to think twice before buying helium balloons for their celebrations or, at the very least, make sure these balloons remain indoors to minimize the chance of their getting away.

   The near-drowning of a Brooklyn man Sunday afternoon in the ocean on Napeague points to a glaring public safety failure. Each weekend in the summer season, many of the thousands of residents and visitors who take bracing plunges do not understand either the danger of the tumbling waters or that the nearest lifeguards are stationed several miles away.

    It was just luck that two bystanders were able to pull Nicholas DeVito, 42, from almost-certain death on Sunday and that someone on the beach knew how to begin cardiopulmonary resuscitation before ambulance personnel, town police, and members of the volunteer ocean rescue squad were able to get there. This story has a happy ending; Mr. DeVito is said to have recovered and to be doing well. For others, like a mother who drowned off Beach Hampton in 2010, the outcome has been tragic. In our recollection, by contrast, there never has been a drowning in East Hampton Town at a beach where lifeguards were on duty.

    Each year, thousands of people flock to the South Fork. Many stay at the resorts on Napeague and in downtown Montauk, where they are drawn by the pull of the sea. For what appear to be complex — but unfortunate — reasons, the owners of many of these hostelries provide beach towels, lounge chairs, and other amenities, but fail to fully provide for their guests’ safety. The moment may have come for lawmakers to force most, if not all, oceanfront resort and residential property associations to post lifeguards of their own. Alternatively, the town could establish mechanisms such as dedicated taxing districts so that the town itself can do so.

     East Hampton Town, by allowing the motels, condominimum complexes, and resorts to be built in the first place, and then greenlighting their expansion and improvement, has an implicit responsibility to assure the safety of those who occupy them. The ocean rescue squad, which provides a tremendous service at nearly no cost to the community, has begun to quietly ask that stations be established to close the gaps between protected bathing areas. This request is one that should be acted on without delay. There is no substitute for a rapid and well-trained response when a swimmer is in distress.

   Winter seems a long way off at the moment, but that’s not so as far as the East Hampton Village trustees are concerned. Tomorrow, they are expected to approve a law that would require vacant and closed-for-the-season shops to place displays or graphics in their windows rather than cover them with depressingly plain paper.

    It is a sad testament to what Main Street, East Hampton, once was, now that it now seems almost a ghost town come November. Where once the downtown shops supported thriving business for 12 months, storefronts now add to the feeling of desolation for half the year.

    All things being equal, we would rather see the return of the kind of places once run by members of the community, by friends and neighbors, not distant corporate offices uninterested in what the place looks or feels like when they can’t be bothered to keep the lights on. Until that day comes, the village leaders are correct in demanding at least a degree of good citizenship from those who are happy just to harvest summer’s richer fruit.

   Seventy years ago Wednesday, four German saboteurs — armed and trained for a mission of destruction — slipped ashore in Amagansett. Though a minor footnote in the annals of World War II, it was one of the very few known incidents in which enemy operatives set foot on United States soil. Moreover, in recent times, the military tribunals in which the would-be attackers were tried and sentenced have been cited as the legal antecedents of how  cases are handled of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

    On that long-ago night, the Germans had with them some $80,000 in cash, crates of explosives, and a few odd items of spycraft. Within moments of their arrival in a hamlet far removed from the battles in Europe and the Pacific, however, a coast guardsman on patrol from the Atlantic Avenue Life-Saving Station discovered them. The Germans said they were fishermen whose boat had run aground. They then contradicted orders by giving him a bribe instead of shooting him and telling him to get lost. John Cullen, a seaman second class, played along, but he quickly returned to the station and sent out the alert. Four days later, a second team of saboteurs landed near Jacksonville, Fla., on a similar mission.

    The manhunt that might have been expected did not exactly follow the discovery of the Germans and their dangerous cache. It was not until one of them managed to convince a skeptical Federal Bureau of Investigation agent that he was really part of a plot against the United States. Still, it was wartime, and J. Edgar Hoover was happy to spread the fiction that the F.B.I. had been on to the Germans from the beginning.

    Today the station from which the unarmed Seaman Cullen walked that night stands in a precarious state. Through the generosity of several private citizens, the Town of East Hampton took over its ownership in 2006 and moved it back to the dunes near its original site. There it is has stood since, more or less buttoned up from the elements.

    A dramatic re-enactment of sorts is planned for Wednesday evening, in which those who are working to restore the station and open it as a museum and perhaps an alternative meeting place will recall the events of summer 1942. It is hoped that the event will draw attention to the station’s important place in our history.

    Money is needed to finish stabilizing and restoring the building. It is a worthy undertaking, one that deserves both official and community support.