UC Board of Regents Chairman Gerald L. Parsky and other regents promised changes to university pay practices, but couldn’t dodge criticisms from a panel of state senators that grilled the board with questions yesterday in the second set of hearings into the university’s compensation practices.

The University of California is in the middle of probing into its compensation policies after a slew of media reports exposed more than $800 million in previously undisclosed compensation packages to top-ranking administrators and other staff.

The state Senate higher education subcommittee expressed major concerns about the university’s transparency, as well as compliance with UC policies and accountability. Parsky partially placed blame for wrongdoings on the UC Office of the President.

Though it was not intentional, UCOP did not properly inform regents of “inappropriate” payments to top executives in multiple instances, including salary paid to former Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs M.R.C. Greenwood even after she resigned from her post, Parsky said.

“UCOP needs to be reorganized … to strengthen the management of the whole system,” he told the committee. “We’re not going to rely on voluntary compliance going forward.”

UC President Robert C. Dynes, who was strongly criticized by the committee in a separate set of hearings held two weeks ago, admitted wrongdoing by granting Greenwood her salary. He acknowledged another UCOP mistake, in which a former UC Davis vice chancellor was given a two-year, $205,000-a-year work-at-home job with no precise duties after she threatened to sue the university for race and gender discrimination.

“In my view, the payment … was a settlement, so it should have been reported to the regents,” Dynes said. “Greenwood’s full compensation was not written down as a disclosed payment. It’s a fact. Whether it was good or bad judgment, it’s the truth.”

Dynes went on to admit that the UC system is “broken” and promised to fix the problem.

The university is in the middle of several audits, including one conducted by an independent fact-finder contracted by the university and another by the state. The regents have focused on changes for some time, according to Regent Judith Hopkinson. In fact, she said, a study released by an independent consulting firm last year revealed that top UC officials were 17 percent behind comparable market pay.

Some senators took offense to the statistic, expressing doubt because the study’s numbers did not include all forms of compensation.

“This compensation practice is really kind of loosey-goosey,” state Sen. Jack Scott (D-Pasadena) said. “We have people getting paid for their sabbaticals and their board seats. After a while, we hear about a salary but that isn’t really the full thing.”

Sen. Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria), suggested that the regents establish an independent body that could ensure compliance with UC policies. Parsky agreed, but warned the lawmakers that establishing a duplicate staff of UCOP and other entities in the university would be wasteful.

Some senators criticized the regents, and said that the board did not do enough to stem problems caused by out-of-hand compensation practices. Sen. Jackie Speier (D-San Francisco/San Mateo) suggested that the regents, who are appointed by the governor and don’t get paid for their service, were not committed enough to their jobs.

“It makes me begin to think, considering what’s at stake, if we should have appointed people with salaries attached to those positions to get them to turn this ship around,” Speier said.

Speier added that the UC system has many other problems that it must address, including lagging faculty compensation, and some senators said they were especially frustrated with the resurfacing of compensation problems after legislators had chastised the university on the same topic in the early 1990s.

“We made a commitment to public knowledge and understanding of our payments then,” Parsky said. “These principles remain the policy of the regents today.”

To enforce policy changes this time around, Parsky made a stark promise that some senators were pushing for: “If that means firing people, we will.”