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.

   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.

   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.

   Rushed to a vote without advance notice, East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson tried to ram through a massive reorganization of the Planning Department and other land-use departments last week, including management of the community preservation fund and aquaculture, among others. The effort failed, but the implications, both of the means by which the coup was plotted and what effects it would have had, are huge and deserve close scrutiny.

    What came up for a losing vote at a board meeting on Thursday night had not surfaced in any public form until the day before, when a resolution appeared on the town Web site calling for the reorganization of the Natural Resources Department. In reality, the proposal went much further: It would have reduced the Planning Department to a few senior staffers and shifted permits for building and land development to a new Environmental Protection Department, headed by a recent political appointee.

    On the surface, the move came out of Mr. Wilkinson’s and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley’s often-stated goal to see greater efficiency in the way approvals under the town code are granted. They voted “yes” on the measure Thursday. In concept, such a goal may have merit, but, in practice, there would be much more than efficiency involved.

    Setting aside for a moment whether the proposal has merit, the way in which it was considered prior to being submitted for a town board vote stands in violation of the New York Open Meetings Law, which every municipality must follow. Basically, the law says that nearly everything elected or appointed officials and voting members of any board do or deliberate must be accessible to the public.

    There are several, very strictly limited — if optional — exceptions, notably to protect litigation strategy, the privacy of public employees, and contract negotiations. In those cases, so-called executive sessions are allowed, excluding the public and the press, though even these are subject to carefully described procedures. Perhaps the most important, and frequently overlooked, requirement in the law is that executive sessions must be called during an open meeting and the subject of the closed-door session disclosed in advance. Everything else government boards do must occur at meetings that one and all can attend.

    There can be no winning argument that a massive restructuring of town departments and how applications for various permits are handled are legally a matter for executive session. Such considerations are to be conducted in full view of voters for reasons of common sense as well as the law. Mr. Wilkinson has overreached on both by claiming that the realignment was properly planned in executive session because it involved individual town employees. This is a ploy. Information about the personal qualifications of those who might lead a new agency could be discussed in private, for example, but how the departments would be aligned could not.

    It is deeply concerning that the town’s top attorney, John Jilnicki, who wrote the failed resolution, could go along with this apparent violation of the law. Unfortunately, the state Open Meetings Law is a toothless tiger; no penalties are ascribed for those who knowingly thwart it. Short of getting an injunction after the fact, there really are no effective means to get officials to comply when executive sessions are abused.

    Though remarkably light on details, the proposal, which Mr. Wilkinson introduced for a vote, would have been a dramatic setback for environmental protection in the Town of East Hampton. By cordoning off key members of the Planning Department on these matters, the reorganization would have been likely to speed approvals of questionable building projects by emasculating their review.

    Moreover, by vesting new powers in some of the town’s less-senior staffers, those most at risk of punitive action from elected officials, the plan would have created a system in which political influence could run rampant. There already have been allegations of arm-twisting coming from the top on certain projects; the restructuring would have set that in stone. Mr. Wilkinson, who has boasted, Yoda-like, that he is the most transparent of elected officials, is transparent indeed. But the transparency shines a light on his motives, not on how he chooses to go about them. This measure appears to have come from an intention to help his political sympathizers, never mind that by doing so he would allow East Hampton to be turned into a place most of its residents would detest.

    If the town’s planning and environmental review is to be redesigned, the discussion must take place in public. Many people have expressed frustration with the way in which all but routine applications are handled. Their views — those of builders, architects, environmentalists, entrepreneurs, and the community at large — must all be invited and carefully considered. Solving the problems that arise would take far more than a handful of people in a room operating under an inappropriate and illegal cloak of privacy.

   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 New York State project to install light-up crosswalks in two locations on East Hampton Main Street is a welcome experiment. But experiment it is — and pedestrians will still need to keep their wits about them.

    No one can know until the work is done how drivers, especially those unfamiliar with the village, will react. Nor will the new crosswalks address the bigger problem of walkers darting across the street near the movie theater or making the Starbucks sprint in the morning while traffic is at its highest.

    East Hampton Main Street is more a slow-speed, four-lane highway than a rural road. Drivers who obey the law and stop for crossing pedestrians block the view for other motorists, as well as the people on foot, and near-accidents are the rule. The light-up crosswalks may help, but then again, they may not. The Federal Highway Administration has reported that the rate of injury is actually higher in crosswalks on multi-lane roads.

    One significant risk is that pedestrians will gain false confidence from the new lights and start their passage without being certain they are being seen by oncoming drivers. Caution is key, no matter how fancy the technology.

    Wind with gusts into the mid-40s from the south-southeast the past few days have taken away what little sand had accumulated at Georgica Beach in East Hampton Village after the last devastating winter storm. Exposed rubble from portions of the parking lot there now lies where bathers might have spread their towels come Memorial Day. To the east and west, short stone jetties block passage to all but the most intrepid. A single steel pipe, hung with a plaintive no-trespassing sign, is all that remains of a fence with which a homeowner, in a quixotic effort, staked a claim to the sand.

    Those who watch the shore know that it is difficult to look at conditions in any one location and single moment in time and draw conclusions. Over the years, however, certain trends become obvious. As the summer approaches, the stark erosion at Georgica commands attention and leaves us wondering whether we are being given a picture of what is to come.

    People ask what it is about this part of the village oceanfront that makes it so susceptible to beach loss. That might be missing the obvious. The houses that line the sand starting at Main Beach and running west to Georgica Pond were the first to appear on the dunes here, starting in the 1890s. A map made in 1902 shows the Main Beach bathing pavilion set a considerable distance back from the water; it now sits on the beach. More were to come. The economic growth that touched off a boom here in the first decades of the 20th century produced dozens of houses nestled behind then-tall dunes, a hundred or more feet back from shore. Little did their owners know, or they didn’t bother to ask the locals, who knew where not to build.

    The dunes that in another era sheltered the summer cottages of the New York well-to-do are, of course, now gone, as are the wide beaches that were in their views. A century’s erosion has seen the sea creep ever closer to their porches. Stone walls, revetments, as they are called in the trade, are all that stand between these early houses and oblivion in one bad storm.

    Elsewhere along the East Hampton oceanfront, houses that were built farther back or on higher ground, for example, near the Maidstone Club, are still years away from this fate. Farther east, at Beach Hampton, in some places in Montauk, and on many bay beaches, officials naively allowed construction in low spots and far too close to the water — and continue to do so. The owners of these houses, seeing the conditions at Georgica this week, may well have a glimpse of the days to come.

    If nothing else, the two forums that have been held recently about East Hampton Town’s scavenger waste plant on Springs-Fireplace Road are putting the matter of the long-term quality of our groundwater back into the public dialogue. This is important for several reasons, not the least of which is that thousands of residents depend on shallow, private wells for potable water, and many of them are highly vulnerable to contamination.

    As to the plant itself, it was closed as a treatment facility last year after the town was cited by the State Department of Environmental Conservation for illegal discharges and other violations. Since then, East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley have been a two-vote bloc pressing to sell the plant for $300,000. A quick sale was thwarted, however, and the dissenting board members have embarked on a fact-finding effort to figure out what to do in a serious, measured way.

    There are two major questions. The first is whether the Town of East Hampton should reopen the multimillion-dollar plant and to what end. It could be run as a waste-holding and transfer station, or it could be fixed up, at a cost so far unknown, and run as a treatment facility. The other big issue is what the town will do in the long term about water quality and septic waste, particularly from home systems.

    Increasingly, scientists and others are realizing that failing and outdated septic systems are not just a threat to drinking-water aquifers but to surface waters — our bays and harbors — as well. Developers and some environmentalists say that small, decentralized sewage plants are the answer, but, while the technology may be promising, there is a high degree of risk.

     Such new systems may be expensive or complicated to maintain, and there is little that local governments can effectively do, given their limited staffs and resources, to make sure they function properly. Speaking earlier this year about wastewater, Bob DeLuca, the president of the Group for the East End, said that municipal treatment facilities tended to “do better” at protecting the environment than private plants. Government accountability, he said, made the difference.

     The organizers of a Town Hall meeting Saturday about the waste plant and related issues, Sylvia Overby and Dominick Stanzione, are on the right track in trying to develop a long-range strategy, based on groundwater testing and the best available science. This is a major issue for the Town of East Hampton and one that is not going to go away by selling the Springs-Fireplace Road facility for a paltry $300,000.

   You know it is going to be a crazy summer when the New York news media start up with their East Hampton stories in April. Scratch that — March, when coverage of the final 2012 sales of the village’s $325 beach-parking permits went big.

    Curbed Hamptons, a Web-only venture, was first out of the gate with news of a record early sellout. The New York Post upped the ante on April 9 by obtaining village records naming the lucky 2,900 who scored the strictly limited nonresident stickers, a few movie stars and famous rock ’n’ rollers among them. Larry Cantwell, the village administrator, told The Post that he had taken hundreds of calls from people about the then no-longer-available permits. “They tell me they’ll pay whatever we want for them,” he said.

    Reading these accounts, it seems the village is leaving chips on the table, so to speak. Next year, East Hampton officials could set aside a few permits and conduct an auction once those remaining are gone, with the proceeds earmarked for public works and preservation.

    If celebrities, congressmen, and federal judges, as Mr. Cantwell told The Post, think the sky’s the limit when it comes to parking at Georgica, Main, Wiborg’s, Egypt, and Two Mile Hollow, why not help separate them from their money if there is good to be done with it?

   By executive order last Thursday, New York Gov. Andrew P. Cuomo set into motion a state health care exchange, something mandated under the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act. The exchange, and similar ones in a growing number of states, is intended to bring much-needed competition to the insurance market and help millions of uninsured Americans get coverage. Had New York failed to act, the federal government would have stepped in to impose its own version of an exchange, provided, of course, that the law survives the Supreme Court.

    Starting on Jan. 1, 2014, New Yorkers and others will be eligible for federal tax credits and incentives for participation. The exchanges have been compared, at least hypothetically, to online travel sites where consumers can shop for the best deals. The owners of small businesses will be able to customize plans to suit their employees’ needs rather than continue to struggle with a system in which terms and higher and higher premiums are dictated by insurance companies.

    The reason Mr. Cuomo went the route of issuing an executive order is that New York Senate Republicans, who tend to oppose what they call Obamacare, made any hope for action on an exchange in the Legislature unlikely.

    From a political point of view, it may not be a winning strategy for Mr. Cuomo’s opposition to spend its energy putting “Obama” and “care” in front of multiple audiences. While no doubt arousing a portion of the Republican voting base, it may not really help the party when the governor is up for re-election. His opponent will be at risk of a moderate or swing voter having the perception reinforced that the state Democrats and the president are the candidates who care about health and the uninsured.

    At any rate, any reasonable program will have to be better than the usury that defines private and workplace health insurance in the State of New York now. We welcome the exchange. Good going, governor.