The Agricultural Lands Dedication Law, better known as Bill 10, is doing exactly what it was intended to do: giving working farmers a tax break, while fairly taxing landowners who hold agricultural land vacant for future development.

A 1999 task force of farmers and landowners agreed that to encourage agricultural use of vacated sugar lands, tax breaks should be given to farmers who dedicated their lands to the active pursuit of commercial agriculture. As a result of that task force, Bill 10 was unanimously passed by the City Council in 2002.

Under Bill 10, farmers honestly working their lands are entitled to tax breaks of 90 percent or more. Compared with the previous tax structure, most farmers are now seeing an actual decrease in their property taxes, with only a few experiencing minor increases.

But landowners who cannot prove they are farming their lands are facing significant increases in property taxes. As intended, the law is effectively weeding out those lands unjustly using tax breaks meant for legitimate farmers.

Bill 10 ensures that the city collects its fair share of taxes from those holding agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes. Granted, after years of paying less tax than warranted, the fair market value of these lands now looks high. The protest raised by these landowners, however, is unjustified, particularly since all other taxpayers have shouldered the burden for the taxes circumvented by the big landowners.

So now comes Bill 35, which proposes to give all owners of agricultural land a one-time tax break of 95 percent, regardless of whether they use the land for agriculture or not!

Using O'ahu's farmers as a "smokescreen," large landowners are asking that they pay only 5 percent of their legitimate tax while they seek to "fix" Bill 10. You can bet that the "fix" they want is a permanent 95 percent discount from property taxes for agricultural lands not used for agriculture.

Bill 35 is not only unfair, it further jeopardizes legitimate farming operations. Currently, large landowners reluctantly lease their lands for farm purposes. Landowners have openly stated that development is the only use that makes money. Accordingly, they would prefer to leave their lands vacant and wait for the next development opportunity — particularly if they get tax breaks without farming.

This is exactly what's happening in Hawai'i Kai. Farmers there are hurting, and the cause is unfairly blamed on Bill 10. In reality, their problem is the landowner who wants to replace farming with more lucrative urban development. By refusing to renegotiate their leases, the landowner is making it difficult for those farmers to obtain the tax breaks they are rightfully entitled to.

So it's mystifying why the Farm Bureau supports Bill 35 when it's so harmful to farmers. It's also difficult to understand why it opposes Bill 10, which gives major tax breaks to legitimate farmers while providing an incentive for large landowners to lease more lands for farming.

If Bill 35 is passed, it would unbalance the city's budget. If we pass the budget without replacing the lost revenues, there would be a significant disruption in the city's ability to provide essential services.

Bill 10 works well and as intended. It helps farmers while dealing justly with the cheats. Bill 35, on the other hand, undermines all the good that Bill 10 accomplishes, provides a windfall to special-interest landowners, and threatens the city's budget.