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University of California officials will face state legislators today in the second of two senate education committee hearings prompted by concerns over the university’s compensation practices.

State senators will get the chance today to follow up with UC President Robert Dynes, who apologized for a general lack of transparency at the last hearing on Feb. 8.

Legislators will also question UC Board of Regents Chairman Gerald Parksy on the board’s responsibility to ensure public accountability at the university.

Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, said she hopes the hearing today will answer her questions about how the university allowed unreported compensations to build up.

“I want to see also what is being done to help me understand how we got here and what we’re doing right now,” Romero said toward the end of the last hearing.

Today’s hearing comes a week after the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Dynes suggested in a letter to Sen. Abel Maldonado, R-Santa Maria, that the UC may have violated its own policies by giving top executives extra compensation without approval from the university’s regents.

Legislators expressed frustration with the UC’s compensation practices at the first hearing in which Dynes apologized for the university’s lack of transparency and pledged ongoing review and reform.

Maldonado said while he appreciates Dynes apology, the university must give a full account of what policies were violated and to what extent, something that the university has not yet done.

The senate hearings were prompted by public concern over reported secrecy in the university’s compensation of top officials.

Last November, The Chronicle reported that the university failed to make public millions of dollars in bonuses, raises and other forms of compensation paid to its employees, kicking off a deluge of criticism directed at the UC’s top administration.

Since then, other compensation issues have surfaced. During the first hearing, legislators questioned Dynes on the reassignment of former Provost MRC Greenwood to a faculty position with a salary of $301,840 after she was found to have violated UC conflict-of-interest policies. UC officials have said her removal from the post of provost is the harshest punishment the UC could have levied.

The Chronicle reported last week that Dynes admitted in his letter to Maldonado that UC officials failed to tell the regents that Greenwood had been promised 15 months of paid leave at her administrative salary when the regents approved her appointment as provost. The $25,153 per month paid-leave agreement became public only after Greenwood resigned amid an investigation of a potential conflict of interest in her hiring decisions.

During the first hearing, Dynes said the UC has not always been accountable to the public in its executive-pay practices.

“We have not always met the standards others hold us to in matters of compensation and compensation disclosure,” Dynes told the senate subcommittee on higher education.

But Dynes promised that reforms are under way at the university and added that the regents have begun to implement a series of reviews which will provide a full account of what needs to be changed in the university’s policies and practices.

As part of the UC’s review process, the university has commissioned an external audit and developed committees to analyze compensation policies at the university.

In addition, the state Legislature is proceeding with its own state audit of the university’s pay practices.