The swirl of news in Edgartown and Oak Bluffs this week around the two town wastewater treatment plants, both managed by superintendent Joseph Alosso, is a tale of two towns with strikingly different approaches to handling a problem.

Let’s be clear. There are not a lot of heroes in a scandal that has been unfolding for more than a year. It was January 10, 2011, when an audit of Edgartown’s wastewater department turned up discrepancies in the way disposal from septic system pump-outs was being reported, prompting a fraud investigation by the Massachusetts district attorney’s office and state and local police. And the exact nature of each town’s problem is quite different, even as they are linked by the same individual.

But where Edgartown has taken deliberate, meaningful and very public steps to make sure the issues are fairly identified and openly dealt with, the opposite has occurred in Oak Bluffs.

With the release this week of the report by special town counsel John Paul Sullivan to the Edgartown selectmen and wastewater commission, all the cards are finally on the table. Troubling facts are now confirmed in spades: Extraordinarily lax management and shoddy record-keeping at the plant have cost the town untold sums of money over a period of some ten years — possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue at the septage receiving facility where haulers were allowed to dump their waste on an honor system, unchecked and unsupervised. An electronic metering system for tracking septic waste, paid for by Edgartown taxpayers and installed at the plant, was never properly used. Receipts meant to be kept for accounting purposes were thrown away, in clear violation of state record retention laws. Equipment was purchased without following state bidding laws. Absent a coherent record-keeping system, all the septic haulers could easily exploit the system to their own advantage — and some apparently did. One of those haulers now faces criminal charges in district court.

It was public money out the window and a public trust violated. And at the helm during all this stood plant superintendent Joseph Alosso, now on paid administrative leave following the release of the Sullivan report on Tuesday morning. If the wastewater commission follows the recommendation of Mr. Sullivan at their meeting this coming Tuesday, they will fire Mr. Alosso. It is the only rational outcome at this stage.

Equally troubling is the role of the elected wastewater commission, as detailed by Mr. Sullivan in his lengthy report. Passive and wholly uninvolved in the workings of the plant, the three commissioners met only sporadically, Mr. Sullivan found. And when they did meet, the agendas were developed by Mr. Alosso, who for all intents and purposes ran the meetings. By their own admission, the wastewater commissioners had little or no knowledge of what was going on at the plant, on a daily or annual basis. Mr. Alosso was running the show with no oversight, and the results are now plainly obvious.

In his report Mr. Sullivan raised the possibility that the sewer commission be changed from elected to appointed, but stopped short of recommending action, preferring to say this is a decision for voters to make. We expect the selectmen will pick up the cue and begin discussion about this.

This is a sad chapter for the town of Edgartown, but the selectmen, their town administrator and technology director, among others, deserve praise for their open and thorough handling of the situation. Once they learned there was a problem, town leaders called for a forensic audit, brought in the police and district attorney to investigate and, once that investigation was complete, hired Mr. Sullivan to conduct an independent review. The Sullivan report is posted on the Gazette Web site this morning and is required reading.

By contrast, the abrupt action of two Oak Bluffs wastewater commissioners to eliminate Joseph Alosso’s position as superintendent of the treatment plant in that town late last week was precipitous, and possibly a violation of the Massachusetts Open Meeting Law. Wastewater commissioner Gail Barmakian, who is also a selectman, and commissioner Hans von Steiger took it upon themselves to put Mr. Alosso out of a job by announcing at a wastewater meeting last Friday that they were eliminating his position due to budgetary constraints. Draft minutes from the meeting show there was little further explanation.

To be sure, the wastewater plant where the irregularities occurred is in Edgartown, not Oak Bluffs. But it would have been perfectly reasonable for Oak Bluffs to conduct a public review of budgets and staffing at its own wastewater plant in light of the issues raised in Edgartown, and it strains credibility that Mr. Alosso’s dismissal was strictly a money issue.

The decision literally came out of the blue, and the matter was not properly posted for discussion on the meeting agenda, as required by the open meeting law. The third wastewater commissioner, Robert Iadicicco, is right to cry foul. It is especially troubling to think that Ms. Barmakian and Mr. von Steiger may have spoken to each other ahead of time to plan their strategy, which would have been a clear violation of the open meeting law.

It all adds up to much confusion and represents a sad setback for Oak Bluffs, where town leaders have worked hard to put the town back on track after a long period of financial instability and weak administration.

There are good lessons that officials in every town can take away from this saga, but none more important than the value of acknowledging a problem and being open about getting to the bottom of it.