[ OUR OPINION ]
Postpone deadline
for passport changeTOURISM in Japan is steadily recovering from the sharp decline of a year ago, but the looming deadline for compliance with new passport requirements threatens to send it plummeting. The Bush administration is asking for a two-year delay in imposing the requirements, and Congress needs to act promptly so foreign travelers can plan their vacations to America.
THE ISSUE
The Bush administration is asking Congress to approve a two-year delay in requiring upgraded passports by visitors from countries where visas are waived.
The Patriot Act required that citizens from the 27 countries who are allowed to travel to the United States without a visa present passports with biometric identifiers -- inkless fingerprint and facial recognition technology -- by last October. Secretary of State Colin Powell extended the deadline for one year but he is not authorized to delay the start-up date any further. Powell and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge are asking that Congress extend the start-up to October 2006.
Australia is the only visa-waived country expected to meet this year's deadline. Japan and the United Kingdom have said they won't begin issuing biometric passports until late next year, and others may not achieve compliance until a year after that, according to Assistant Secretary of State Maura Harty.
If the current deadline is imposed, Japanese tourism in Hawaii would nearly disappear. In the last fiscal year, Harty told a congressional committee that U.S. consular officials in Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe and Naha processed 111,000 nonimmigrant visas required of those traveling to the United States on business or for more than 90 days. Japan estimates that imposition of this October's deadline would mean, theoretically, that up to 1.5 million Japanese would need visas, which require U.S. Embassy interviews. Such a task would be impossible for the State Department's consular staff to perform.
Hawaii tourism from Japan dropped sharply about a year ago, due to the start of the war in Iraq and the SARS disease outbreak. The number of Japanese traveling to Hawaii is up 13 percent from last year, according to the most recent weekly report by the Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau.
Biometric passports will greatly improve national security, but more time is needed for other countries to make the changes. If they are not given that time, Powell and Ridge are correct in predicting that foreign travelers will "'vote with their feet' and go elsewhere, causing multibillion(-dollar) losses to our economy and reducing employment in one of our economy's most dynamic sectors."
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Public has right to grade
Dobelle and regentsHOW soon taxpayers will be able to see a job performance evaluation of University of Hawaii President Evan Dobelle will depend on whether he decides to challenge a state agency's opinion that the document should be made public. Nonetheless, the determination rightfully places public consideration before Dobelle's and the Board of Regents' as well.
THE ISSUE
A state agency says an evaluation of the University of Hawaii's president should be revealed.
The issue arose when the board rejected a request for the evaluation from the Star-Bulletin and later KITV. The news organizations then sought the opinion from the state Office of Information Practices, which administers Hawaii's open records law.
OIP last week said that although Dobelle has "significant privacy interests" in the board's assessment of his performance and its expectations for his work, the agency "finds that the public interest is greater" and that disclosure "would not be a clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy." Noting that the opinion may be disputed, OIP officials held off on releasing the evaluation for a week to give Dobelle -- and maybe the regents -- a chance to object.
Access to the evaluation, conducted last year, is surely justified. Dobelle, who earns $442,000 a year, is the chief executive of the state's only public system of higher education, which enjoys semi-autonomy. As president, he oversees 45,000 students on 10 campuses and a budget of $660 million.
The opinion notes remarkably that accountability dictates public scrutiny not only of Dobelle, but of the board itself. Disclosure, OIP says, must favor the public's knowing "how the Board of Regents is performing its duties," which "includes the employment of the UH president."
In this, the agency appears to widen its reasoning for release of the document, indicating disclosure also allows taxpayers to keep tabs on regents, whose actions in evaluating Dobelle had already been called into question.
As Dobelle commented to the Star-Bulletin's Craig Gima, OIP had issued a previous opinion that regents' meetings on his evaluation were conducted without proper public notice and that the "process was flawed."
Neither the board nor Dobelle argued how the president's privacy outweighed the public's right to know. That may be because it doesn't. Dobelle and the board both serve at the public's pleasure.
