With scallop season fully under way now in both state and East Hampton Town waters, reports indicate a good crop, if not quite as good a crop as last year’s for individual harvesters. The dip in the per-boat catch so far is anecdotal; it could be the result of more crews taking to the water or a decline in the scallop population — no one really knows for sure. This raises the question of whether the shellfishery as managed now is sustainable.

    The natural population has been augmented significantly with hatchery-raised “bugs,” or juvenile scallops, from the East Hampton Town Shellfish Hatchery and Cornell Cooperative Extension. These ongoing efforts are responsible for placing millions of bugs in East End waters and the effort undoubtedly has helped return the population from the decimation of the brown tide, or algae bloom, years.

    New York sets a 20-bushel per day limit for a commercial boat, most of which catch the bivalves by dragging submerged dredges. The maximum take is half that in town waters. These limits represent best guesses at harvest levels that can be maintained over time; we hope the science supporting them is the very best. All concerned, the commercial fishers who depend on scallops to help pay the winter bills and those of us who simply love to eat them, have an interest in making sure this tasty bivalve is around for the long haul.

    You have to wonder why the owners of small private planes want so badly for East Hampton Town to seek Federal Aviation Administration money for a deer fence. At a hearing last Thursday, pilot after pilot came to the Town Hall microphone to support the Republican board majority’s plan to pursue funding from the F.A.A. But why? Really, why?

    The possible answer may lie not in a concern for the town’s finances — there is plenty of money for the fence in a dedicated airport surplus fund. It may instead be because many pilots genuinely believe that without F.A.A. oversight, there is a risk that the airport would be shut down. Indeed, the head of a pilots association has pointed out that the leaders of several anti-airport noise groups have not said they would not seek the closing of the facility altogether. Taking money from the F.A.A. helps head off that possibility even though there is no credible movement apparent to see the airport boarded up.

    As David Frum, a former George H.W. Bush speechwriter, wrote recently in New York magazine, there are wealthy and influential figures on the right who actually, and in all honesty, think Barack Obama’s presidency represents some sort of an apocalypse. Similarly, reasonable pilots from East Hampton and Southampton really do think that airport-noise opponents could some day force the whole place to be turned into condos, or lord knows what. Both views are powerful, despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary.

    So if there is no chance that East Hampton Airport will be closed, who then would be affected if the town succeeds in gaining some degree of local control? The current sweetheart deal of low airport fees could persist or be changed regardless of F.A.A. funding. Limiting helicopters in some way would not appear to harm the private pilots who filled Town Hall last week. Nor would a ban on late-night or pre-dawn takeoffs and landings by loud jets put a damper on the owners of recreational aircraft. No, something else is afoot here, though exactly what that may be is not immediately clear.

    East Hampton Town may be getting into the fuel-regulation business in a small way, but not without  concern about possible spills and unfair competition.

    The town board is headed toward approving an addition to the code that would make it legal to pump diesel from trucks at the Commercial Dock in Three Mile Harbor; gasoline sales from trucks are prohibited. The practice, which prompted a lively debate at a town board hearing in 2009, has in fact been going on for decades, but without significant controls. If the board approves the law, direct diesel fueling of boats from trucks would end at Lake Montauk and at town-owned docks used by recreational boaters.

    The Gann Road site was singled out because the largest vessels cannot get to the few private marinas with fuel docks at Three Mile Harbor and because it is in easy reach of the deep navigation channel. In Lake Montauk, there are several relatively accessible private fuel facilities with adequate spill containment and other protections.

    The proposed town law contains a troubling contradiction, however. It explicitly acknowledges the environmental risk and potential liability of truck-boat fueling, but would allow it nevertheless where no other source was immediately available. This is not the right solution.

    The community’s interest in clean waterways would be far better served if the town sought a company to set up a diesel facility at the Commercial Dock, meeting the same high safety standards as the private marinas. What East Hampton should not do is allow fuel truck operators to undercut established marine businesses — all of which have had to invest large sums of money to be able to sell fuel — and at the same time increase the risk of ecological damage.

The East Hampton Town Board’s new interest in how Cablevision franchise fees are apportioned is a good idea, with the possibility that the hefty sum might be spread more equitably.

    By longstanding practice, nearly all the money the town gets annually from Cablevision goes to LTV, which provides public-access and educational television and broadcasts many town meetings and work sessions. The town board held a hearing last Thursday on Cablevision’s use of the town’s right of way for transmission lines, but much of the real action has taken place in private discussions between the town and the cable company. The town board has been looking to get more money for allowing Cablevision’s Optimum division to have a near-monopoly on television service and a dominant share of Internet use.

    The 2012 town budget anticipates $850,000 as the franchise fee, a more-than-40-percent jump over the amount paid to the town in 2011. The figure is based on 5 percent of Cablevision’s reported revenue in East Hampton Town, up from 3 percent.

    Whatever the actual sum turns out to be for 2012, the thinking around Town Hall lately is that the pass-through to LTV could be reduced. Until a review of LTV’s finances was conducted earlier this year, the town board (and the public) had just about no idea how the money was spent. The board asked for several clarifications of the data LTV submitted.

    With the town’s having cut other social-welfare, education, and cultural services, it seems only reasonable that the size of LTV’s share should also be on the table. Though its supporters are sure to disagree, the outsize payments to LTV that come with few strings attached and minimal oversight appear questionable.

    The pending one-month suspension of Larry Penny, the East Hampton Town director of natural resources, on what may be exaggerated charges, does not bode well for the environment here. Though Mr. Penny has the right to a hearing to contest the claims, the outcome appears preordained, and the town board’s move against Mr. Penny seems a precursor to his firing.

    Having presented voters with tax cuts cobbled together by tapping money from surpluses, the town board knows it will have to balance the books sooner or later by trimming expenses. This makes Mr. Penny’s income, roughly $100,000 a year plus benefits, a tempting target. That the board’s majority has in the last two years essentially declared themselves at war with environmentalists provides ample reason for concern that motivations beyond Mr. Penny may be at play.

    If the board acts quickly to solidify the Natural Resources Department in his anticipated absence, however, most fears would be allayed. The town board needs to name a temporary, qualified replacement to take Mr. Penny’s position should the suspension come to pass. If the board does not do so, it will become evident that the majority views the Natural Resources Department as an afterthought or impediment. And, if Mr. Penny is gone for good, the stakes become much higher.

    If the town board is being straight with the community about what it sees as flaws in Mr. Penny’s job performance and fires him, it must quickly hire someone whom it believes will do a more effective job of protecting our natural resources. And, if it’s even just for 30 days, someone must always be watching out for the town’s environment.

    Tomorrow is Veterans Day and, like last year and the year before that, it is a day on which the United States is engaged in military conflicts on several fronts, including Afghanistan, which is said to be the nation’s longest war.

    According to the census, there are 22 million United States military veterans. About 1.7 million American men and women have served in Afghanistan or Iraq, some in both countries, and some on multiple tours of duty. Each has a personal understanding of what Veterans Day means. In a recent poll, only a third of these veterans said they believed those wars were worth fighting. And the number who reported having emotional difficulty returning to civilian life is now almost twice what it was among those who went to war before Sept. 11, 2011.

    Small gestures can help. One event, for example, will take place on Saturday at the Stephen Talkhouse, the Amagansett music venue. A group of musicians calling themselves Music for Morale will entertain to raise money to buy much-wanted supplies for a Marine unit deployed in Afghanistan, as well as to provide musical instruments for wounded veterans and those suffering from other war-related problems.

    This year, it is important not to overlook this country’s most recent servicemen and women, to thank them for the jobs they did or continue to do, to welcome home those who have returned, and to think with sadness of those who did not.

    Tomorrow on East Hampton Main Street — as in cities, towns, and villages across this country — veterans will march. It will be an opportunity for all of us, those who served and those who did not, to remember.

    Whatever happens next in Manhattan for Occupy Wall Street, after a 1 a.m. eviction by police Tuesday, it is remarkable that the encampment was allowed to remain in Zuccotti Park for so long. This would have been unimaginable in the past. Although the mayor’s responses have been erratic, few were confident at the movement’s outset that he would exercise any restraint.

    The city had successfully limited dissent with Orwellian “free speech zones” during economic summits and political conventions for years. The police were out in force and with video cameras during the National Republican convention a few years ago. Back in September, when all this started, few thought the city would allow the protesters to stay in the park one night, let alone until November.

    Detractors say they don’t understand what the Occupy Wall Street protesters want, but in one important aspect, the movement has been a success. If you ask just about anyone these days if they know what is meant by the 1 percent, they will have at least an inkling. The New York encampment and the others around the country have put the vast prosperity gap in the United States into the public consciousness.

    Whether it will lead to reforms that the poor and working class can take to the bank remains to be seen, but Americans are talking about it, and that’s a start.

    We wish Stephen Lynch well in his new post as East Hampton Town’s next superintendent of highways, but there is a certain sweet irony in his election. Among the responsibilities he is soon to have is keeping the roadsides clear of anything that does not conform to the town code, notably signs larger than six square feet. This is paradoxical because Mr. Lynch’s campaign billboards and parked, truck and trailer-mounted messages were among the most expansive of this year’s political season and, as such, were obvious violations of the law.  

    We do not mean to single out Mr. Lynch. Plenty of other oversize signs and illegal off-premises come-ons kept his company. Nevertheless, East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, Scott King, the outgoing highway superintendent, other elected officials, and Town Hall personnel drove to work each day past other examples without doing anything about it. (Yes, we know we bring this up frequently, but we are going to keep at it until someone in authority starts paying attention.)

    Normally, these rules are within the purview of the Ordinance Enforcement Department, but it was as if its staff had never read the town code. You have to wonder what other less-obvious violations of the town code go without remedy.

    As of the January organization meeting at which he is to be sworn in, Mr. Lynch will be in a unique position in town government: He answers only to voters and does not have to operate in the highly politicized environment of the town board. The code, which he will promise to uphold, gives him the right — shared with the town police — to remove signs, illegal obstructions, and other objects of concern within the town’s right-of-ways. Mr. Lynch should study the code, seeking independent, outside advice, if need be, so that he can direct his crews to remove whatever is necessary to put a stop to this ever-expanding visual affront to public property, good taste, and the law.

    In news of the violence that has broken out in Cairo in recent days, a report has circulated that may indicate that the Egyptian authorities are paying attention to how some police in the United States have responded to the Occupy Wall Street protests.

According to the accounts, an Egyptian state television anchor cited the “firm stance” taken by United States law enforcement to “secure the state” as a justification for the Egyptian crackdown. This report came from Twitter, posted by Sultan Al Qassemi, a journalist and important voice in the Arab Spring uprisings. Whether or not this can be independently confirmed, it points to a troubling double standard between the United States’s internal actions and foreign policy.

    Occupy Wall Street first gained widespread attention in September, when a supervising officer in the New York Police Department used pepper spray on an unarmed and nonthreatening group of four women who had been standing together. Before that, the protests had been a curiosity; after it came out that N.Y.P.D.’s “white shirts” from higher ranks were leading an aggressive response to keep “sidewalks clear and crowds moving along,” the protest rapidly grew into a movement. Protesters greeted the news that the officer who had used pepper spray was “punished” by having 10 vacation days docked with anger.

    On Friday, campus police at the University of California Davis used pepper spray on nine seated protesters who had defied orders to move. Photographs of this unprovoked attack have become a new rallying cry of the movement. In one particularly resonant image, some wit digitally placed the campus officer into John Trumbull’s famous painting of the signing of Declaration of Independence, blasting America’s founding document with an orange-colored haze.

    It must be conceded that a few angry cops and misguided public officials do not add up to an overturning of democracy. Nor should  the police’s removal of the library Occupy Wall Street put together at Zuccotti Park be  considered on a par with book-burning in Hitler’s Germany. However, violent responses to the peaceful encampments reinforce the movement’s messages about inequality and the use of official force to resist meaningful change.

    If the report out of Egypt is accurate, the world is indeed watching.

    New York State may come up short of cash as 2011 comes to an end, and the outlook for the 2012 budget has dimmed, according to latest projections. The anticipated shortfalls are renewing attention on Albany’s version of a “millionaire’s tax,” which is set to expire next month.

    The state appears to be facing a deficit of $350 million this year between what flows in and what must be spent to keep government running. Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Budget Division said this week that a drop in tax revenue linked to volatility in financial markets was largely to blame. An expected weak bonus season on Wall Street adds to the grim picture. The budget gap for the next fiscal year, which begins April 1, is estimated to be as much as $3.5 billion.

    The so-called millionaire’s tax is actually a surcharge on New Yorkers making $200,000 a year or more. Although the extra tax has brought in about $4 billion a year, many Albany lawmakers and Governor Cuomo oppose its extension. Mr. Cuomo has said the issue is one of fairness and that continuing to tax high-income residents would result in more of them leaving the state. He says there is more room for more spending cuts.

    State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., who represents the South Fork, has a different idea. He has sponsored a bill that would extend the higher rate on millionaires and use the money to fund rebates to offset property taxes on households earning $250,000 or less. State income tax credits worth about $2.3 billion would be given to taxpayers based on a percentage of their income. The rest of the money raised by the surcharge would go for aid to schools. The idea is attractive in a Robin Hood kind of way, but, given the looming state budget crisis, it would seem to have little chance of passing. Mr. Thiele has said none of the millionaires who live in his district have complained to him about the current surcharge, though.

    With deficits likely this year and in 2012-13, Albany should look again at extending the extra tax on the state’s richest residents. Fair or not, it seems necessary.