Several Hawaii lawmakers are attempting to persuade their colleagues to initiate an audit of the state agriculture park program amid a legal dispute between two park tenants intertwined with alleged misdeeds by a state manager.

The House Committee on Agriculture voted 8-0 Wednesday to advance two resolutions calling for such an audit after a public hearing at which one tenant, a mom-and-pop farm operator raising fish and produce in Kahuku, testified along with their attorney.

Phyllis Shimabukuro-Geiser, director of the state Department of Agriculture, opposed the resolutions and called them premature actions over which the agency has strong concerns.

Rep. John Mizuno, House vice speaker, led the introduction of House Resolution 77 and House Concurrent Resolution 77, co-introduced by nine other House members.

Mizuno (D, Kamehameha Heights-^­Kalihi Valley) said an audit is needed to investigate how the state’s 10 agricultural parks are being managed and to ensure tenants are farming and not abusing rules as alleged in the lawsuit over use at Kahuku Agriculture Park.

The lawsuit was filed in December by Simeon and Kathy Rojas of Hooha Farms LLC.

The couple said they invested $200,000 to establish a hydroponic and aquaponic farm on 3 acres at the park. They have sued another tenant, Alii Kawa LLC, owned by Thomas Narvaez Jr. and Misty Narvaez, which subleases the 3 acres to Hooha Farms. The state also is named as a defendant in the case.

The Rojases contend, among other things, that the park’s manager, Roy Hasegawa of the Agriculture Department, directed the couple to sublease land from Alii Kawa because no park plots were available, and that Hasegawa approved but did not properly process an application to allow the Rojases to farm under a sublease that wasn’t received by or approved by the state Board of Agriculture as required.

State attorneys deny this in legal filings, claiming Hasegawa only referred the Rojases to Thomas Narvaez as someone who could clear land and that Hasegawa received paperwork for an intention to farm but no sublease.

The state also contends that Hasegawa didn’t know about the sublease arranged with Alii Kawa in 2016 and believed Simeon Rojas was an employee of Alii Kawa, until trouble began.

“The case against the state is meritless,” state attorneys said in a January filing in the case.

Alii Kawa also is contesting the lawsuit and has filed a counterclaim.

“I have taken no action of a preying or predatory, fraudulent, corrupt, conspiratorial nature nor any negligent acts or behavior to seek to remove the plaintiffs off the land, take their farming business and facilities, and to be unjustly enriched,” Thomas Narvaez said in a filing in the case in February.

The Rojases allege that both Alii Kawa and Hasegawa pressured the couple to give them ownership in their farm operation as part of an extortion effort related to the farm having an unapproved sublease.

The couple also is battling Alii Kawa in a related legal case after Alii Kawa unsuccessfully sued to evict its subtenant in August and temporarily cut off the subtenant’s water supply on grounds the sublease between the two parties is not valid.

“This is fraud and blackmail,” Kathy Rojas told the committee Wednesday. “My husband was done wrong. … He was tricked into this lease.”

Simeon Rojas, a military veteran who served in Iraq, said the farm was a way for him to cope with war trauma but that it turned into a bad experience instead.

“Please, I ask of this council and the Legislature to make changes,” he told committee members.

Bosko Petricevic, an attorney representing the couple, gave the committee his admittedly blunt assessment of what his clients have been through: “They’ve been the victim of fraud, corruption, negligence and complete dereliction of duty by the HDOA and its official.”

Shimabukuro-Geiser said after the hearing that the pending legal case should be concluded prior to any audit, if lawmakers approve the resolutions for the state Office of the Auditor to audit agriculture park operations.

Meanwhile, the Rojases have arranged to lease land in Hawaii Kai from Kameha­meha Schools to start a new farm operation there.