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.

   By a 3-to-2 vote, the East Hampton Town Board further consolidated power in the town budget office in the name of budget restraint early this month. Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, who led the party-line vote, explained that eliminating the town personnel officer would save $170,000. Len Bernard, the budget chief and Mr. Wilkinson’s appointee, will now be the only town official sharing hiring, firing, and, presumably, disciplinary matters with the supervisor. That’s not a good idea.

    East Hampton Town personnel issues have already been highly politicized. Late last year, for example, the Republican-dominated board failed to take action when a town employee was caught on video using a Highway Department truck to run over and remove roadside signs promoting the election of a Democratic candidate. Just last week, the town’s top building inspector apparently was hustled off on an unplanned vacation after a dressing down over having issued a stop-work order the supervisor didn’t like. Town Hall has been described for some time as having an unpleasant atmosphere in which Mr. Wilkinson frequently huffs about “subordinates” and how they should toe the line — as he sees it.

    One would think, therefore, that town officials would be especially sensitive to placing too much unchecked authority in the hands of two closely aligned individuals, especially when one is a political appointee who could be expected to keep an eye on making the boss happy. Lest East Hampton residents need any reminding, former Supervisor Bill McGintee and Mr. Bernard’s immediate predecessor as budget officer, Ted Hults, were responsible for a town deficit of some $27 million, which is still being paid down. It took months of forensic accounting to figure out what, acting exclusively, they had done, and the town’s bond rating, ability to pay for future projects, and credibility paid the price.

    No matter how much confidence Mr. Wilkinson has in Mr. Bernard, and vice versa, and how much money the two may try to save, a system of checks and balances is warranted. Having a career personnel officer, who reports to the town board as a whole, is one way to keep watch on lapses in judgment and untoward influence.

   In a Minnesota courthouse on Dec. 15, a man with a handgun opened fire, wounding a county attorney and a bystander. Just over a week ago in Middletown, N.Y., a man walked into another courthouse and began blasting with a shotgun, stopping only when security officers shot back, killing him.

    Violence of this sort may be relatively rare, but it merits close attention. The legal system can be a source of frustration for those who find themselves tangled within it. Courts can become the focus of the obsessions of the mentally ill, whether they are brought in on charges or not. And the terrible rages that surround domestic violence can lead to dangerous confrontations.

    Security officers assigned to the halls of justice must be vigilant and sharp-eyed as defendants, litigants, attorneys, and spectators stream past each day. According to a think tank concerned with judicial safety, there has been a 40-year trend in the United States of increasing attacks on judges and in courtrooms. The need for security is bolstered by the fact that guns are found in approximately one-third of all households in this country. Tragedies such as the ones seen seen in Minnesota and upstate may never be duplicated here, but no expense should be spared to be sure they won’t.

    Before the new East Hampton Town courthouse was built, cases were heard in the same building as the offices of the town clerk, supervisor, board members, and others, with the public coming and going through two unsecured entrances. Until recently, East Hampton Town Justice Court was held in a building for which metal detectors had been ordered but never installed. The money for the personnel needed to staff them was finally included in a recent town budget. These recent incidents underscore our belief that money on security is well spent.

   According to informed sources, people are starting to go out to lunch more often. This is good news for the local economy, at least as one out-of-town restaurateur of our acquaintance sees it, particularly if lunch-goers happen to be good tippers. This is probably also true in other areas of the service sector, where in most cases a gratuity in hand goes directly back into circulation. If there is a more expedient way to get dollars to where they are needed most, short of outright charity, we don’t know what it is.

    The part of the breakfast, lunch, or dinner tab that goes toward food can have a stimulative effect as well, if a restaurant gets supplies from nearby vendors who, in turn, hire local workers. According to a restaurant-industry association, 98 cents of every dollar spent in a New York restaurant remains in the state. About 8 percent of all employment in New York State is in the restaurant business, where about a third of all workers had their first job experience.

    Everybody needs to eat. It’s good to know that heeding one’s appetite can have a stimulating effect.

   A passenger ferry to Sag Harbor has been talked about on and off for years, but now, in a joint venture involving a North Fork company and the Hampton Jitney, it may come to pass. Long Wharf could see passengers going to and from Greenport, and vice versa. There would be no service for cars on a 53-seat catamaran that the owner expects would make seven-day-a-week round trips as soon as Memorial Day weekend at a cost of $20 per person, $11 one way. If all goes well, Response Marine of Mattituck, which is seeking approval for the service, would hope to extend it to East Hampton and Montauk.

    There are hurdles ahead for the ferry, especially in Sag Harbor. Its fate may well rest on how the Village of Sag Harbor decides to respond to an offer from Suffolk County that it take back control of Long Wharf. Mired in a financial crisis, the county is eager to be rid of the pier and its attendant maintenance costs. As much as $400,000 in upgrades and safety improvements are said to be needed immediately. Until this is resolved, the fate of the ferry run will be unknown.

    On the positive side of the ledger, ferries can be part of a welcome alternative-transportation system. Planners have long made getting people out of cars a goal; this could be part of that. Although ferries of all sorts are banned in Sag Harbor now, the law could be repealed. This and a number of lesser issues are not insurmountable, however, if the public wants to jump aboard the idea.

    On the negative side, though, is the matter of parking. To avoid a worst-case parking problem in Sag Harbor, Jitney buses or vans would bring riders from Bridgehampton and East Hampton, where they apparently would leave their cars. The would-be ferry operators are optimistic that passengers would not mind boarding buses to get to the ferry. If this surprises us, and the ferry turns out to be popular anyway, long-term parking elsewhere would have to be found. Parking anywhere near Long Wharf is subject to strict time limits, and is always hard to find in season, possibly resulting in cars lining surrounding residential streets, which calls for a prohibition.

    Response Marine, which would run the waterborne part of the service, has said it would be willing to start the ferries on a trial basis this summer. This seems a fair way to test the popularity and the problems,  but ferry operators must convince Sag Harbor officials and those in surrounding jurisdictions that adequate parking will be available. Doing so by Memorial Day would appear to be a tall order.

   The New York State attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, says the illegal trafficking of prescription drugs is epidemic on Long Island. This week, he announced legislation that would create a database intended to slow the rate at which narcotics end up on the street.

    Local police are dealing with nearly as many suspects high on pills, such as painkillers, as with drunken drivers. According to the attorney general’s office, drug treatment admissions, linked in part to oxycodone and other narcotics, soared by nearly 80 percent in Suffolk County from 2007 to 2010. Authorities believe that many of the pills reaching abusers are obtained with fraudulent prescriptions. And violent crime has been associated with these substances, as well.

    If passed, the bill would require doctors to check with an online system before writing prescriptions and pharmacists to do the same before dispensing these drugs, which would help spot wrongdoing. As burdensome as this sounds, it, or a similar program, is necessary, but should be established correctly.

    Details about how the database would work have yet to be provided. The greatest challenge will be to protect patient privacy, something required under state and federal law. There are legitimate conditions for which the Food and Drug Administration allows these drugs to be distributed. A method to assure that doctors are able to order them for the people who really require them — without placing law enforcement hurdles between doctors and pharmacists — will be essential.

   A number of fed-up Springs residents are demanding that the Town of East Hampton do more to eliminate overcrowded and illegal houses. Their request for increased enforcement of laws already on the books is reasonable.

    From the late 1990s to the present, Springs has become something of a dumping ground for the town’s low-end multiple housing. The hamlet is not alone in this distinction; you can point to houses from Montauk to Wainscott that are home to more occupants than the four unrelated adults the law allows. The concentration in Springs of single-family houses used as de facto apartment buildings is disproportionate, and unfair.

    Residents complain that the town looks the other way as their neighborhoods are degraded. They are angry that taxes rise because the children of Spanish-speaking parents, who may live in illegal apartments, enroll in the schools. Property assessments, they say, have not kept pace with the widespread and illegal conversion of single-family houses. They fear that simple, get-tough responses will not do enough to preserve neighborhoods and ease school costs.

    Town officials say the Code Enforcement Department is doing its job, but the homeowners responsible for offending dwellings appear to have little fear of prosecution. The walls of local delis and food takeout places are hung with notes advertising rooms for rent. Stories from ambulance personnel and police are legion about basements carved into unsafe bunk rooms and houses in which bedrooms are locked from the outside. And, as some Springs residents say, you often can tell where a landlord is breaking the law just by counting the vehicles parked near certain houses.

    The Concerned Citizens of Springs has asked for a meeting with town officials on the matter of illegal housing and enforcement. Officials should, of course, listen with open minds about anything government can do to help. But it will be meaningless unless the town can figure out how this community can provide more and better legal housing for the people who work here.

   A plan supported by East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson to privatize four tennis courts at the Terry King park on Abraham’s Path in Amagansett has drawn considerable opposition, as well it should. Now, with new information about the prospective private operator’s plans, reasons for rejecting it are underscored.

    Mr. Wilkinson reasons that the courts need work that could cost $100,000 or more, and Sportime, which operates the nearby indoor sports facility called the Arena, has said it would be willing to lease the courts and repair them at its own expense. To be sure, the town is in a tough spot, pinched between McGintee-era debts and the current board’s aggressive tax cuts. Unfortunately, however, Sportime has been criticized for not entirely following its agreement with the town on its low-priced lease of the Arena, limiting public hours and failing to make required improvements.

    Sportime also runs an East Hampton tennis club that has a successful summer camp for children. Its brochure promises “the exclusive use of the Sportime Multi-Sport Arena,” despite an assurance in its agreement with East Hampton that the facility be substantially open to all, providing further evidence that leasing the four courts to the company would not be in the public’s interest.  

    The puzzle is why Sportime, which already has more than 30 private courts on two nearby parcels, totaling about 22 acres, would need to add the few at the Terry King park. As it turns out, the company is interested in erecting a steel building or fabic dome over the Terry King courts to allow year-round and inclement-weather play. There are at least two other tennis facilities in East Hampton Town with domes, and it makes sense that Sportime would want to get a piece of the 12-month pie.

    But winning approval for a building over some of the club’s private courts would be nearly impossible, however, because they are pre-existing nonconforming uses on residentially zoned land. Trying to expand the business in this way would be a long, complicated process, opening the club to scrutiny by the town planning board and giving neighbors an opportunity to speak out in opposition. Putting up a building at the Terry King park, on land zoned for recreatioin, would be a negligible expense for Sportime, and it could be done quickly.

    Under the town’s control, the Terry King courts cost $8 per hour between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and $4 for kids or senior citizens. Play is free after Labor Day until the nets are taken down for winter storage. If the courts are put in private hands, and under a roof of some sort, the price is likely to rise, hours to be limited, and free off-season games put in jeopardy.

    The town should not promote commercial empire-building at the expense of public recreation. Nor should it use public assets to aid in an end run around zoning rules. This is a bad deal and should not go forward.

   For the first time, the veil has been pulled back on what the Federal Aviation Administration would and would not do in the matter of noise control at and around East Hampton Airport. In a detailed response to a request for clarity from Representative Tim Bishop, the agency said it would not pursue legal action once certain “grant assurances” expire if the town decided to impose what it calls “reasonable” restrictions there.

    The long fight over use of the airport has become more intense as the years have gone by and more people have come to live under its approach paths. Then, too, more and more helicopters are using East Hampton Airport, irritating people well beyond the town’s borders. It need not be this way. The airport has been an unnecessarily divisive problem for a town beset by plenty of other challenges — and one that pits a relatively small number of aircraft owners and fixed-base operators against thousands of residents whose lives and weekends are disrupted.

    A control system to be in place this summer holds some promise of noise reduction, but will not be an entirely satisfactory solution. Helicopters will still chuff at the air as they approach and depart. Jet flights at the crack of dawn will still rattle windows and disturb the peace as they roar over backyards.

    Airport interests genuinely fear that the facility could one day be closed, which is precisely why they are so eager to see F.A.A. oversight continue. As the recent memo from the administration says, new grants would obligate it to seek to block any locally imposed restrictions. A recent example is an East Hampton Town Board decision in December to seek money from Washington for deer fence repairs that would cost less than the town already has paid out of pocket for a lawyer to consult on airport affairs. The town could clearly afford to do the work itself, and still has the chance to avoid F.A.A. money for the project even though airport interests have convinced town officials that their only hope lies in Washington.

    If fear — rational or not — that the airport could be mothballed is what stands in the way of meaningful noise reduction, that is the first problem that must be addressed to begin to break the logjam. Pilots and airport business owners must be assured that their hobbies and livelihoods will not be at risk. Only then will they stand aside and stop their efforts to block local control by convincing officials to take more money from the F.A.A.

    A solution appears tantalizingly close.

   What to do about East Hampton’s septic waste treatment plant on Springs-Fireplace Road has become a source of political division and tension in Town Hall.

    Treatment ended there last year after the state cited it for environmental violations. Bringing it into compliance with discharge regulations could be very costly.

    On one side, Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley favor selling the plant to an UpIsland firm, perhaps for $300,000, a price some have derided as too low. The other point of view, that of Councilwoman Sylvia Overby and Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc, is that the town should learn more about its options, present them to the public, and draft a new wastewater management policy.

    Somewhere in the middle you find Councilman Dominick Stanzione, whose call for more time to explore the options has contributed to his falling from favor among some members of the local Republican leadership. They have accused him of throwing in his lot with Ms. Overby and Mr. Van Scoyoc, who are Democrats.

    Mr. Stanzione’s position is reasonable, however, and should not be dismissed out of hand. He recently said that though he liked the idea of turning the plant over to a private company, other options should be considered. Among them were closing the facility completely and using the land for something else, or keeping it running, as it has for the past few months, as a transfer station, where waste haulers deposit loads to be trucked out of town for treatment.

    The lone offer the town received for the plant came from a firm whose principals were 30-year friends of the consultant who wrote the town’s request for proposals for it. This has drawn some criticism, but not the scrutiny that it warrants. Mr. Wilkinson was eager enough to be rid of the plant that he was willing last week to begin negotiations. We disagree. East Hampton Town’s long-term interest would be better served by a more thorough deliberation.