A state Senate panel holding confirmation hearings on Peter Young as director of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources questioned Young yesterday about how he responded to potential criminal violations at the department's Bureau of Conveyances.

The state Attorney General's Office is investigating activity at the bureau, including whether bureau documents were manipulated and whether bureau employees received unexplained checks.

Young, who is not a target of the investigation, told the Senate Water, Land, Agriculture and Hawaiian Affairs Committee that he recommended the matter be referred to the attorney general. "If these allegations prove to be true, then they need to be prosecuted," Young said.

Senators also asked whether Young thought the bureau gave preferential treatment to Title Guaranty of Hawaii, which had donated two computers to the bureau in the 1990s and, according to the department, was among several outside interests that paid a fee to access bureau documents.

Young said he had discussions with Title Guaranty, and other title insurance companies, about ways to help ease a backlog in recording documents in the bureau's land court registration branch. He also said he had heard claims that Title Guaranty received preferential treatment.

Title Guaranty, in a statement, said it works closely with the bureau but has the same access to bureau records as other title companies: "The access is through the Internet, and is in a read-only format. The documents kept by the Bureau of Conveyances cannot be altered by use of this access."

The state's criminal investigation into the bureau, and a separate ethics investigation, has been the subject of closed-session testimony the panel has taken under subpoena.

State Sen. Russell Kokubun, D-2nd (S. Hilo, Puna, Ka'u), the committee's chairman, said transcripts of the sessions are being made with the intention of releasing all but the confidential information to the public.

Kokubun said the committee will vote on its recommendation on Young to the full Senate after the transcripts have been released and after senators on the panel have digested the testimony from five days of hearings. A committee vote is expected early next week.

"I have concerns, but I need to kind of put the big picture together," Kokubun said. "I know there are accomplishments — I don't deny those. But I think there are some very valid criticisms."

Environmentalists and Native Hawaiian groups, including some who had almost called for Young's resignation two years ago, have backed his confirmation, while many fishermen and some Hawaiians worried about protecting burial sites have been against the director. Several current and former department workers have testified under subpoena about management difficulties in the boating and historic preservation divisions.

"I am confident in saying that in the next four years we will expand partnerships across the state and regain the trust with different constituencies who continue to question us, and let them see that we share the same goal of making and keeping Hawai'i the way that it is," Young said.

Outside the Senate yesterday, Gov. Linda Lingle and more than two dozen of Young's supporters held a news conference that mocked the Senate's hearings.

"I'll tell you the political way we look at this: You throw a lot of mud and you hope something sticks. And that's what's going on in these hearings right now," Lingle said.

State Senate President Colleen Hanabusa, D-21st (Nanakuli, Mahaha), said the Young hearings took longer than other Lingle nominees because of the workers who came forward with concerns about the department and the requests by the attorney general and the state Ethics Commission for closed sessions on some of the testimony.

Hanabusa said senators have a constitutional mandate to advise and consent on Cabinet nominees and a responsibility to thoroughly examine a director's performance.

"I believe they have the right and the obligation to ask these questions of someone that you want to head a very important department," she said.

Reach Derrick DePledge at ddepledge@honoluluadvertiser.com.