Town of East Hampton

AT ODDS OVER RIGHT OF KINGS, AND JET SKIS, ON LONG ISLAND (free registration required):

John Lagana traces what he calls his inalienable right to ride his WaveRunner off the shores of this exclusive beach town to nothing less than the divine right of kings — specifically of one, King James II.

Mr. Lagana, 40, found out the hard way about East Hampton’s water scooter ban back in 2001, when he was ticketed twice and warned that his fancy toy could be impounded.

Each ticket carried a $100 fine, but Mr. Lagana’s disproportional war to get them dismissed includes mountains of research, four court challenges, more than $10,000 in expenses and legal fees, and endless traffic-clogged trips from his Rockland County home to this far-flung corner of the East End, where he has a summer place.

His crusade relies on a document that turns 320 years old today and has called into question the entire political power structure of a place known more for its rich and famous weekenders than for the colonial underpinnings of its government.

Town officials are equally resolute in defending the ban, which includes Jet Skis, WaveRunners and other personal watercraft. They have refused to dismiss the tickets, paid thousands of dollars to an outside lawyer, and accumulated bins full of legal papers.
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When King James II deeded the eastern tip of the South Fork — which now includes East Hampton, Amagansett and Montauk — to a group of settlers in 1686, the governor in chief of the province of New York, Thomas Dongan, drew up the patent, granting “freeholders and inhabitants” of the area the right to “enjoy without hindrance” recreational activities like “fishing, hawking, hunting and fowling.”

The legal power of such deeding documents, which exist throughout Long Island and in other early-settled places, has been upheld by courts including the United States Supreme Court.

Among Mr. Lagana’s arguments is that a passage in the federal Constitution prohibiting the creation of “any law impairing the obligation of contracts,” and a provision in the original New York State Constitution protecting “grants of land made by the authority of the king,” gives Dongan power in perpetuity. “If you’re going to ignore the Dongan Patent, you might as well throw out the Constitution,” he said.
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Mr. Lagana’s long, strange water scooter campaign has surprisingly high stakes because it challenges the two-tiered system of government here and in several other towns in eastern Suffolk County.

East Hampton’s five-member elected Town Board meets a few times a week and oversees the budget, the police and general government operations in this town of 11,000 residents. Its nine-member Board of Trustees, which includes several descendants of those 1686 settlers, is also elected, meets twice a month and claims control of local roads and waterways.

It was the Town Board that banned scooters from its sheltered waterways in 1988. It is the trustees who say on their Web site that they “represent the original government of East Hampton,” and were “granted sole authority over” the town by King James II through the Dongan Patent.

Fascinating stuff.