An unfortunate inequality is built into New York State’s new 2-percent tax-levy cap, which is becoming clear as school districts struggle to keep within that limit while local governments appear to be facing somewhat less immediate stress.

    For school districts that are grappling with rising costs, labor agreements, and state mandates, such as East Hampton and Springs, the cap has made budgeting for the next fiscal year more than difficult. In order to go beyond a 2-percent increase in the portion of school spending raised by taxes, districts would have to win at least 60 percent of the votes in their June budget referendums. It’s probably an understatement to say that could prove a high hurdle.

    By contrast, five-member municipal boards can exceed the 2-percent limit by a simple three-vote majority of the board — as about one-fifth of the state’s local governments did for 2012. And, as has been seen in the Town of East Hampton, for one, it is easy enough in the short term to slash local taxes by leaving jobs unfilled, eliminating some services, and dipping into surpluses. Of course, holding the line too much can set up a scenario when future costs will force local leaders to confront unpopular options. That can even be politically desirable if a rival party is in power when the bills come due.

    It is far more difficult for public schools to make trims, given contractual obligations, and in many cases rising student populations, than it is proving for New York’s towns and villages. This is undoubtedly not what the 2-percent cap’s backers intended because it puts too much of the burden for tax relief on educators and, by extension, students. Troubling, too, are indications, like one recently reported from State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, that some municipalities may seek to make up their budget gaps by tacking on new sales taxes and fees — something schools cannot do.

    The answer will not be in arbitrary or unfair limits but in systemic reforms in which municipal governments and school districts are not pitted against one another, each with their hands probing to varying depths in taxpayers’ pockets.

Welcome Opposition

It is early yet, with only one East Hampton Town Board meeting so far this year, but already it appears that the three-people-in-a-room way local government has been run may be coming to an abrupt end.

    With two newly elected members of what might be considered the opposition party if this were the British Parliament, the town board is likely to cease being a panel where rushed and mysterious pieces of public policy are voted on with nary a peep from its minority members. This is a good thing; many of the embarrassments of the past two years have come from measures that were hatched without open discussion, such as an ill-fated rock festival apparently illegally approved for a residential site in Amagansett.

    Of course, it would be a surprise if the Republican majority on the board — Bill Wilkinson, Theresa Quigley, and Dominick Stanzione — whose record took a drubbing in November, adopted a more inclusive approach in Town Hall. If nothing else, however, Sylvia Overby and Peter Van Scoyoc, the Democratic board members who were sworn in on Tuesday, will play the role of question-askers, slowing down decisions so residents can learn more about what is being done in their name.

    Two recent matters before the board make a strong case in point. For reasons unknown and at the behest of an unnamed buyer, the town board was in a race against the clock at the end of the year to get bids for the sale of seven office condominiums in which it houses a number of key departments. Then, in the last meeting before the Christmas holiday, the board quickly and without explanation decided to move toward selling a “drainage easement” off Hand Lane in Amagansett. Why and for whose benefit? Well, Mr. Stanzione and Mr. Wilkinson apparently know, but they weren’t saying. The way this was handled would be comical if we weren’t talking about the people’s business.

    We expect that the new town board members will use their positions to insist on the clarity of purpose that residents expect — and deserve — from their town government.

   According to the key contributor to East Hampton Town’s 2006 dark-skies lighting code, East Hampton Town Councilwoman Theresa Quigley is confused about a draft revision of those regulations. While stopping short of accusing her and Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson of lying, Susan Harder says she checked with an architect who supposedly was consulted on the revisions, and he told her that as far as he knew, he had nothing to do with it. The question of who said what to whom — or did not — obscures the central issue, which is just why and on whose behalf the Republican majority on the town board decided to mess with the lighting law in the first place.

    Attempts to improve 1970s-era protections of the quality of the night sky date back about a decade in East Hampton Town and have their origins in an almost-one-woman effort by Ms. Harder. In 2002, she asked, “Why can’t we get the night sky declared a scenic resource?” After a couple of years’ work, the town as well as East Hampton Village did just that. In the village, a 2004 law that requires lights to be shielded and not directed upward was passed without a fuss. East Hampton Town strengthened its lighting code in 2006, also with minimal complaint. “Keep that lurid orange glow to the west of us,” seemed the consensus.

    However, by 2010, when the last recalcitrant business owners were supposed to comply with the law’s generous “sunset” provisions on offending fixtures, it became a problem. Suddenly, there were objections: The rules supposedly were difficult to understand and compliance would result in inadequate outdoor safety. While the complaints may have been sincere, it is probably more than coincidence that the beefs emerged only when the affected business owners were about to have to pony up for required changes.

    Dark skies, or “smart-lighting” rules like those in place here, are important for several reasons. They preserve the view of the stars and allow for a welcome distinction between night and day when the sky is overcast. Animals — and people — are said to do better when night is night and day is day. An unobscured view of the heavens, if you take a metaphysical view, helps remind us of our place in the universe and encourages study and understanding of the mysteries of the heavens.

     Ms. Quigley appears to be spearheading an effort to completely undermine the East Hampton Town lighting code. As we have editorialized before, if the cost of compliance is the objection for a handful of business owners, the town might offer a bounty on outdated fixtures. Though reasonable adjustments to some of the language in the law may be warranted, there should be no wholesale dumping of the existing regulations.

East Hampton Village tends to get it right when it comes to aesthetics. The village once was dubbed America’s most beautiful village, and successive generations of elected officials have taken that honor to heart. In that spirit, and notwithstanding any claims to the contrary, the village board has proposed additional decorum on signs on private property — specifically those put up by real estate companies. If the law is enacted as proposed, real estate signs would be just a little larger than a page of this newspaper folded in half.

    The board is to consider the code change at an 11 a.m. hearing tomorrow that would limit on-premises real estate signs to one-and-a-half square feet; signs up to seven square feet are allowed now. The village has pointed out that similar laws are in place on Shelter Island and in Palm Beach and brokers in those places have learned to live with the restrictions. We would love to see this come to pass here, but there is one important caveat: The suggested code change is probably unconstitutional.

    Even though the U.S. Supreme Court has given real estate signs an exemption from outright bans, certain questions of fairness remain. For example, the village’s new law would limit the size of house-for-sale notices while allowing temporary construction company signs to continue to be as large as seven square feet. The village’s well-intentioned code change should be rewritten to withstand potential legal challenges — and be fair. This is a case where one size fits all is the only legal way to proceed.

    That’s the good news. The bad news is that you can forget about a similar restriction in East Hampton Town anytime soon. In the current political climate, code enforcers are not seeking compliance on obvious violations of elements of the sign code already on the books.

    We expect the village board to iron out the legal wrinkles in the proposed law. We doubt that the town board will follow the village’s lead, but maybe we’ll be surprised.

   It is good news indeed that the Village of Sag Harbor appears to be moving forward with a project to reduce the amount of polluted run-off that crosses Havens Beach and flows into the bay. A short creek there, more of a drainage ditch, has for years carried water from surrounding upland properties and several roadside sumps. The public bathing beach there has been closed pre-emptively by the Suffolk Department of Health after heavy rainfalls, and shellfishing nearby is banned year round.

    For more than a decade, the only warning that something was amiss came from neighbors who would wander over to warn parents when they spotted children splashing in the polluted water. Now, a split-rail fence more or less encircles the creek, with notable, if ambiguously worded warnings put up by the village.

     Though environmentalists have for years been concerned about the water quality at Havens Beach, it was not until 2010, after human fecal coliform and other bacterial traces were found, that village officials got serious about correcting the situation. In fact, back in 2007, a demand by the Peconic Baykeeper organization resulted in angry pushback from village officials. Now, after as many as 15 years since the problems were first identified, work may begin soon on a two-pronged response that would reduce the amount of contamination.

    As envisioned, rebuilding the wetland there and installing a relatively new commercial filtration system should make a marked difference. Work may begin sometime this year once the proper permits are secured. Those involved inside and outside of village government are optimistic about the prospects and an end to the occasional closing of the swimming beach.

    The installation of a filter and a restored wetland cannot be the end, however, of the village’s commitment — and that of other towns — to protecting the bays and harbors. In the aggregate, the amount of contamination that leaks from outdated cesspools into marine ecosystems on the South Fork probably dwarfs the Havens Beach creek source by several orders of magnitude.

    From time to time, officials have talked about offering homeowners incentives to make septic-system improvements. As the Havens Beach work gets under way, it might be a good moment to revisit a regional approach to improving the health of all the area’s waterways.

   As the Springs School Board continues its struggle to find ways to pay for educating students while not asking taxpayers for more and more, a cost-savings idea is gaining ground. The notion of eliminating the district superintendent’s position and handing those duties to the school principal was discussed at a forum on Dec. 22. Meanwhile, in the East Hampton School District, the board is grappling with the prospect of overcrowding in the elementary and middle schools even as the last details of its recent $79 million expansion are finalized.

    In Springs, money problems are acute. Taxes in the hamlet are already among the highest in East Hampton Town. The school’s enrollment has surged in the last decade, with an increasing proportion of new students classified as English-language learners, which adds to staffing requirements. To be sure, the recent discussion of combining the superintendent’s and principal’s roles (plus an assistant or two) was inconclusive. But from an outside perspective it seems dicey for a district facing many challenges to have so much riding on a single person.

    Springs has somewhere just under 1,000 students to provide for and keep tabs on, whether at the Springs School itself or at East Hampton High School. It also provides bus transportation for Ross School students and those who attend the classes of the Board of Educational Services. Along with financial oversight and matters concerning the physical plant, that seems enough for one person to keep tabs on without also adding the many academic challenges and day-to-day difficulties arising at the elementary school itself. One person might be able to do the job, but whether it would be done well is another matter. The decision-makers in Springs should find out exactly how its superintendent and principal have divvied up their responsibilities before taking what may turn out to be a counterproductive step.

    On Tuesday, East Hampton’s board was expected to discuss the size of classes at the John M. Marshall Elementary School. Though this district has deeper financial resources than Springs, the willingness of taxpayers to come up with money again for new construction is probably limited at this point.

    Both districts’ problems are pressing and will make for a difficult year ahead for their elected boards and administrators.

   A battle for the future of the ocean shoreline is shaping up at Georgica Beach in East Hampton, and, as state and local officials nudge the matter slowly toward a court showdown, the beachgoing public’s right to use the beaches is threatened. The dispute points to a difficult time ahead in which the self-interest of waterfront property owners will be increasingly at odds with the desires — and rights — of the public.

    East Hampton Village officials are likely to sue a beachfront homeowner who had a bizarre Guantanamo of steel poles installed at the seaward edge of her property in August following serious erosion as Tropical Storm Irene approached. Georgica Beach has been a mess in the last couple of weeks, with anyone hoping to walk west from the village parking lot at high tide forced to duck under the barrier and submit to the gaze of what appears to be a security camera.

    Molly Zweig, the property owner, has so far defied the village’s citations for putting in the fence without permits. She, or a representative, was supposed to meet today with the State Department of Environmental Conservation, which is apparently seeking a resolution out of court. Ms. Zweig will undoubtedly claim she is protecting her property; The state should see it as a landgrab and violation of its own regulations.

     To the east, things were not much better, with older rock revetments and perpendicular jetties making access difficult. Predictions are that sea level will continue to rise, bringing more, and more rapid, erosion — and more conflicts like that brought on by Ms. Zweig.

    This is not just an issue along the ocean, however. For example, the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals will shortly hear a request from the owner of an Amagansett vacation house at Lazy Point who wants to evade the town’s coastal erosion regulations to install a prohibited stone sea wall. If given the go-ahead, public access along this stretch of beach will be severely limited, if not cut off altogether. We hope the zoning board has the stomach to say no in this case and others.

    Life on the beach is a temporary proposition, and those who did not realize this when choosing their properties have only themselves to blame. As at Georgica, local officials across the East End will need to stand tough in order to maintain the people’s right of passage against an onslaught from property owners and their lawyers. Too many mistakes were made in the past in allowing houses where they should not be and then approving shore-hardening structures to protect them, robbing the public of its beaches. It is time to draw a line in the sand — while there still is enough sand on which to draw.

   Advocates of a free and open Internet rose up last week in protest of bills in Washington that would greatly increase the government’s ability to police what is called online piracy. Citizens called and e-mailed their representatives, and Web sites went dark for a day to make a point. The political power of the Internet made news, and the bills were sent back to committee.

     Arguing for Congressional action, entertainment industry lobbyists say that illegal file-sharing costs them billions in unmade sales and harms the United States economy in lost jobs.

    The House bill, SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act), and a related bill in the Senate, PIPA (the Protect Intellectual Property Act), were intended to curb rogue viewing and downloading of copyrighted content, such as movies and music files. Opponents say SOPA could be used to unfairly punish sites, such as Google, for simply providing access to other sites, particularly sites offshore, where protected material is available illegally. Federal digital take-down orders could black out whole swaths of the Web, they fear, in an unprecedented and massive new form of censorship.

    There is no question that the recording industry in particular has been hurt by music’s move to computers. During the decade that file-sharing became popular, record sales declined sharply. But piracy (if you can call it that) is not entirely to blame. Where consumers once shelled out $15 for a compact disc, they now can pay just 99 cents for a favorite song. And you can listen to a universe of online music for free on a computer, eliminating the need to buy discs or to steal. For the movie studios, the loss of revenue has not come so much from people downloading new releases but from the collapse of videotape and DVD sales. Consumers can easily — and legally — watch movies or listen to music at home over inexpensive devices, and that’s what’s really putting the crimp on content producers.

    According to a widely cited research paper, online searches for movie piracy sites tailed down in recent years as inexpensive subscription-based services, such as Netflix, took off. So if illegal downloading isn’t the big threat the studios and music-sellers say it is, why the push for help from Washington?

    The backstory is that the studios’ contracts with Netflix and other streaming video services will be up for renegotiation in short order. Subscription costs are expected to jump, and this is expected to cause renewed consumer interest in seeing movies without paying for them. Hollywood, with the help of Washington, is trying to get out in front of a rush to find lower-cost or free entertainment. It won’t work.

   In a remarkable turn of events that could have implications on the South Fork, Williams-Sonoma may be blocked from returning to the California city that gave the cookware company its name if a new ordinance against “formula” retail stores is adopted.

    The $3 billion company, with 268 stores in the United States, first opened as a single shop in Sonoma in 1956, then moved to San Francisco. Now it has plans to open a store on the original site, but the city council is close to passing a moratorium on chain businesses while it works on permanent limits.

    A leading proposal would subject retailers with 10 or more outlets to a permit review in which the look and layout of their outlets would be considered. As the Sonoma Press-Democrat described it, formula chains would have to “promote diversity and variety, be consistent with Sonoma’s unique and historic characteristics, and be compatible with existing uses.”

    To some extent, permit review here already allows for an aesthetic look at commercial projects. However, the ideas from Sonoma seem much tougher and could offer guidance on strengthening our own rules. The process on the far side of the country bears watching.

Another month, another delay for the Surf Lodge. The Montauk nightspot, filled in season by crowds of revelers drawn east by its hipper-than-thou allure, is supposed to answer in East Hampton Town Justice Court to some 640 citations of code violations dating from the summer. But its day of reckoning has been put off until the end of January, and probably beyond that, if the trend continues.

    In some ways, the Surf Lodge seems a victim of its own success. No one, probably not even its owner, Jayma Cardoso, could have anticipated just how popular it would become. It is worth noting that the nightclub Ms. Cardoso took over is on a residentially zoned parcel where such businesses are no longer allowed unless they predate zoning, which hers does.

    We have heard from several Montauk residents who are worried that the ongoing delay will benefit the Surf Lodge in the form of reduced fines or stalling until a deal can be struck allowing certain variances from the code, perhaps retroactively. A back-room arrangement is not outside the realm of possibility considering that the town board at one point was ready to give the bar and restaurant the use of nearby, town-owned land for parking and that some town officials have inexplicably seemed sympathetic to a place many view as troublesome. Any further holdup is unacceptable.