Editorials

Last spring, after the Black Lives Matter protests had begun, the New York Legislature voted to change a portion of civil rights law that had blocked police disciplinary records from public disclosure. The section of the law, known as 50-a, had made the records confidential, meaning that even the most serious repeat offenders might be shielded from scrutiny.

In the last week, the shiny halo that many New Yorkers had thought hovered above Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s head may have dulled a little as it became clear that he had withheld data about Covid-19 deaths in nursing homes and then refused to answer questions about it. More than 15,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the state’s nursing homes and long-term care facilities. At one point last August, when the Legislature and state attorney general asked for information, Mr. Cuomo decided to keep the toll secret.

A victory handed to a group of Napeague homeowners associations in the State Courts Appellate Division will almost surely have ripple effects elsewhere in East Hampton Town.

The position that a president or any other government official could avoid conviction simply by resigning is indefensible, both in terms of historical precedent and common sense.

All along, it has been difficult to accept at face value that the motive to carve out a new Wainscott village was the wind farm cable alone.

A majority of Republican senators have made it clear already that they plan to acquit the former president after his impeachment trial begins. They have been given cover in this by citing the nonsense claim that, after leaving the White House, ex-presidents cannot be prosecuted.

This week, federal health officials may have confirmed something that has become increasingly clear as the pandemic drags on: Kids should be in classrooms.

Sag Harbor Village appears ready to hand Main Street and Long Wharf over to a private corporation to manage paid parking during the summer months in a major change taken without a trial run or enough public input before the contract stage.

Amid all the fluster about several schemes floated for changing the downtown East Hampton Village parking rules one important thing is missing — any sense of what the issue is in the first place.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Kamala Harris becoming the first woman vice president in United States history is that it does not feel all that remarkable that a woman should occupy such a position. It is, of course.

More than two weeks have passed since the murderous insurrection at the United States Capitol, and, if anything, the events of Jan. 6 have grown more horrifying with the passage of time. The seditious co-conspirators must be expelled from Congress.

By persisting in the stolen-election lie, Lee Zeldin took the side of the pro-Trump armed attackers and betrayed United States democracy.

There are perhaps as many ways to look at the rampage at the Capitol as there were participants, but one thing is indisputable: It was a planned attempt for one branch of federal government to take over another.

With a vote on Wainscott village incorporation a possibility, the moment has come for the East Hampton Town Trustees to play hardball. 

Talk at a recent East Hampton Town Board meeting about the potential use of the former Child Development Center of the Hamptons building on Stephen Hand’s Path as a Covid-19 testing and vaccination site suggests that local officials are at last beginning to realize that they must do more.

Before now, few American voters would have known that the sixth day of January following a presidential election year was important.

The annual charity Polar Bear Plunge at Main Beach will not be held this New Year’s Day, leaving East Hampton food pantries without the many thousands of dollars usually generated by participation fees.

The East Hampton Town Board is considering banning gas-powered leaf blowers during the warm-weather months and placing curfews on them during the off-season.

There has really never been any question about the right thing to do where the Montauk downtown ocean beach is concerned.

Living-room spread does not quite match what could be 2020’s phrase of the year, “superspreader event,” but in defeating the Covid-19 pandemic, we are now told that our smaller social gatherings are the source of more infections.

How the Republican Party rebuilds after the president is out of office — or even if it can — has been the subject of a great deal of discussion as his term ends.

In a year of unrelenting bad news, the region got an end-of-December gift in the form of language in a federal appropriations bill that would stop the looming sale of Plum Island to the highest bidder.

It is terribly disappointing, but not at all surprising, that Representative Lee Zeldin would join 125 other members of the House of Representatives in opposing the orderly transfer of the presidency from one administration to another.

We have to admit that we were more than a little puzzled at news last week that large oysters are considered too big to market. This seems like a missed opportunity for shellfish growers and restaurants alike.

There have been more deaths in Suffolk than there have in 20 states, more than in Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Rhode Island, and Nebraska, to name a few. Fourteen people died from the virus in Suffolk on Monday, the highest single-day number since May.

The creation of a geographic entity — a village in this case — out of opposition to offshore wind power would seem the stuff of some far fringe of society. Only it isn’t.

No one wants their loved ones to die of Covid-19 in a hospital hallway. But many places in the United States are at that point right now, or near to it, as virus cases soar.

So of all people, Attorney General William Barr on Tuesday made the obvious concession that there was no evidence of voting fraud that could change the outcome of the November election.

A last-gasp effort by the Trump administration to mess with the 2020 census to undercount as many as 10.5 million people living in the United States with proper documents appears to have run into immovable opposition from the Supreme Court.

The bane of many drivers’ daily travels between East Hampton Village and Sag Harbor, the dread state Route 114, will get a makeover next fall.