Two state senators behind the Public Land Development Corp. on Monday recommended a new strategic plan to help respond to intense criticism from environmentalists, Native Hawaiians and labor about the corporation’s mission.

In a letter to the PLDC’s five-member board, state Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz (D, Kaena-Wahiawa-Pupukea) and state Sen. Malama Solomon (D, Hilo-Honokaa) said they are "sorely disappointed" about what they described as the misinformation that emerged from contentious public hearings this summer over the corporation’s proposed administrative rules.

The senators recommend that the board adopt a strategic plan that makes it clear the corporation will comply with the state’s laws regarding environmental review, historic preservation, open meetings, wage rates and ceded lands.

The strategic plan would stipulate that property ownership would always remain with the state or counties in development partnerships with the private sector and that projects must comply with state or county conditions. The corporation would also agree not to develop agricultural land eligible for designation under the state’s important agricultural lands program.

THE corporation was created by the state Legislature and Gov. Neil Abercrombie in 2011 as the development arm of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources. But the idea has been criticized from the start by environmentalists and some Native Hawaiians wary of developing public land for profit. The corporation also has a broad exemption from land use and county zoning laws and construction standards, which is meant to offer flexibility for development projects but has led to questions about potential risk to the environment.

Most of the testimony at public hearings this summer was not over the corporation’s administrative rules. Instead, critics attacked the corporation’s mission and called for the law that created the corporation to be repealed.

"We are sorely disappointed in the amount of misinformation that has been spread to the public and possibly advocated by the PLDC’s opponents," Dela Cruz and Solomon wrote in their letter to the board. "The establishment of a new entity is always difficult. It has been made even more so by the false rumors of what the PLDC may do, instead of publicizing information about the PLDC’s core mission, which is to make Hawaii’s lands better for Hawaii’s people."

DELA CRUZ, chairman of the Senate Water, Land and Housing Committee, said in an interview that the strategic plan recommends an operational framework he believes the board should adopt with its administrative rules.

"The rules should comply with what they are trying to achieve," he said.

Corporation staff is reviewing public testimony from the hearings. If the testimony leads to significant revisions to the proposed administrative rules, a new round of public hearings would be scheduled.

Kalbert Young, the state’s budget director, who is chairman of the corporation’s board, described much of the public criticism of the corporation as premature.

"Where the process is right now is for public input on what should be included in the rules, the public’s suggestions about what should be included in the rules," he said. "All I’ve been reading about in the paper is people criticizing what the Public Land Development Corp. could be, or might be, but that’s the whole point of where we are in the process, is to develop the rules.

"So some of that, I think, is premature."

Many states have formed similar corporations to develop public land, and several existing state agencies in Hawaii have carved out special development rules.

Robert Harris, director of the Sierra Club Hawaii chapter, said he is not sure the senators’ recommendations will be enough to address public doubts.

"I’m not sure that it’s going to satisfy the concerns about this agency," he said.