Opponents of the city of Bainbridge Island’s proposed update to the Shoreline Master Program did themselves few favors at this week’s public hearing by sticking to their familiar script of legal punditry and generalized assumptions of the new regulations and policies.

This week’s hearing before the Department of Ecology included, yet again, dire warnings of legal problems and lawsuits if the updated program is adopted.

Critics have continued with doom-and-gloom warnings that the regulations are so far-reaching that homeowners will need a permit to prune a plant in their yard, or that the city will require all shoreline property owners to make way for public paths to the beach across their properties, which could include viewing towers, as well, they’ve claimed.

Neither charge is true, though it is true that some developments in shoreline properties classified in a few stretches of shoreline that are characterized as “urban” — downtown Winslow, mostly — will have to provide public access to the shoreline if large commercial or multi-family projects are pursued.

Tiresome, too, is the continuing claim that the regulatory package is just too long, and consumes too many pages, for islanders to comprehend or understand.

We give our fellow islanders a lot more credit than that.

Complaining about the size or scope of the update, we note, is like complaining that the extensive, small-print paperwork that accompanies most prescriptions these days just has too many words to make the drugs themselves beneficial or effective.

The comment period on the update continues until Aug. 23. Those who seek changes in the program should devote themselves more to substantive suggestions on appropriate changes to specific policies or regulations within the proposal, rather than Chicken Little assessments of the update that offer little guidance to Ecology officials during their review.