Several often-neglected Hawaii government ceme­teries adopted from private operators could be in store for better care.

A state agency is proposing to create and fund a cemetery management office to regularly maintain eight cemeteries on three islands that don’t receive routine groundskeeping service.

The state Department of Accounting and General Serv­ices is asking state lawmakers to appropriate almost $2.3 million over the next two fiscal years to run its proposed new office.

DAGS Director Keith Regan told a pair of legislative committees earlier this month that the proposal is among agency priorities this year and is needed to respect roughly 6,000 burials and living descendants who visit many of those graves.

“Currently, the way that this is being handled is, when we have time, we’ll get out there and do it,” Regan told members of the Senate Committee on Government Operations and the Senate Ways and Means Committee. “And so oftentimes it gets neglected. We don’t have staff to be able to send out to properly maintain (the cemeteries).”

Regan also told the committees that there has been vandalism at some of the sites and that more resources to maintain the cemeteries will help stop desecration.

When vandals toppled headstones about five years ago at Waianae Japanese Cemetery, one of the eight cemeteries overseen by DAGS, it was community members who responded with weed whackers, chain saws, rakes and trash cans to clean up the property.

People also had been living among kiawe trees in the cemetery at the time and using the property’s water supply to shower.

Lena Suzuki, whose husband’s grandparents and great-grandparents are buried at the cemetery off Waianae Valley Road, organized the cleanup and said at the time that volunteers filled six trucks and a large trailer with mattresses, trash and debris that had littered the area.

Chiemi Kochi, who has lived next to Pu‘ukamali‘i Cemetery in Alewa Heights for roughly 60 years, said Friday that groundskeeping has gotten better in the past two or three years. Still, the grass at times can still rise up to around a thigh-high level before being cut down by DAGS workers.

Kochi, who also recalled the use of prison labor to maintain the cemetery in years past, said more routine maintenance would be good.

On Friday a DAGS crew of two had just finished mowing the 3-acre cemetery, where the water system is broken and vegetation has disturbed some grave sites.

DAGS handles many functions of state government, including grounds maintenance for 115 sites including the state Capitol, public office buildings, libraries and civic centers. But there are no specific resources or funding to support care for previously private cemeteries currently owned by the state, according to the agency.

Under state law the state comptroller, who heads DAGS, is “responsible for the operation, maintenance, improvement, redevelopment, and disposal of state-owned cemeteries; for the determination of ownership of plots therein; and for the proper maintenance of records pertaining to the cemeteries, including cemetery plot plans, and records of plot ownership, interments, and disinterments.”

The DAGS director also is empowered to arrange for nonprofits to manage state-owned cemeteries.

Much of the history surrounding why the state acquired some of the eight cemeteries from prior private operators is not known to current DAGS leadership.

According to one DAGS document, Makiki Cemetery at the corner of Pensacola Street and Wilder Avenue was probably Honolulu’s first government cemetery, part of which was used by Oahu Prison. An initial executive order in 1933, when Hawaii was a U.S. territory, put the cemetery under the control and management of the Superintendent of Public Works.

The document also said that Pu‘ukamali‘i Cemetery, which dates back to at least 1901 and previously was known as Kalaepohaku Cemetery, was put under the jurisdiction of the territorial Public Works Department in 1931.

Burials at Pu‘ukamali‘i date back at least to the early 1900s and have continued over decades since then, with some of the more recent burials done for people who died in 2014 and 2015. There is also a small monument memorializing four sons of Hawaii who served in the U.S. Army infantry during World War I and died without their final resting places being known.

The other cemeteries under DAGS care on Oahu are Aiea Cemetery adjacent to Aloha Stadium, Puea Cemetery near Bishop Museum, and Waianae Cemetery, which is not far from Waianae Japanese Cemetery.

Two of the cemeteries are on other islands: Hanapepe Cemetery on Kauai and Kalaoa Cemetery on Hawaii island.

In recent years there also have been efforts, including bills that failed at the Legislature, to have the state take ownership of the run-down Sunset Memorial Park in Pearl City after the owner of the property died.