Morgan State University officials faced tough questioning from state lawmakers on Friday over an audit faulting the institution’s construction-spending practices, the Baltimore Sun reported.

Members of the State Senate’s Budget and Taxation Committee, which held the hearing on the audit, told the newspaper they felt frustrated that hours of questioning did not provide them with more answers as to how the money had been spent and why. The State House of Delegates is expected to hold hearings on the audit in the coming week, and the auditors have referred their findings to the criminal division of the state attorney general’s office.

The legislative audit found that the university had padded a $4.3-million contract with the Whiting Turner Construction Company with a $3.1-million cushion and now cannot account for part of that money. The audit also found that Whiting Turner had been overpaid $825,250 in duplicate billings, and that two university employees had been simultaneously paid as both regular and contractual workers, resulting in overpayments of $121,400 that were not discovered for months.

The university’s director of design and construction management resigned last month, just before the audit’s findings were made public. —Peter Schmidt