U.S. embassy in China moves fast

The U.S. Embassy in China has wasted no time implementing President Barack Obama’s executive order to ease Chinese tourists’ ability to travel to the U.S.

Obama gave the State Department 60 days for to put together a plan, and that was only three weeks ago. It said it will add about 50 new consular officers across China — a 50 percent increase in staffing — to process visa requests and, beginning Monday, allow officers to waive interviews for some qualified applicants to renew their U.S. visas.

The average Chinese tourist spends $6,000 in the U.S., according to the U.S. Commerce Department. Nearly 126,000 had been expected to visit Hawaii this year, spending an average of $380 a day in purchases, but that prediction should be vastly revised with these latest developments.

We need a lawyer to interpret the law

Kauai authorities are probing the as-yet-undisclosed details of a complaint that led last week to Mayor Bernard Carvalho putting the police chief on administrative leave. But that’s not the only pursuit in progress.

Patrick Stack, chairman of the Kauai County Charter Review Commission, told the Star-Advertiser that the charter has “many ambiguities,” including whether the Police Commission or the mayor has the authority to put the chief on leave.

Stack said the Office of Boards and Commissions backed Carvalho’s action, but he read through conflicting charter sections and was still unsure about it. So a formal request for a legal opinion is forthcoming, in the form of a letter to the county attorney.

Sometimes, in the law-and-order business and many others, the law isn’t so easy to figure out.