After facing days of withering criticism, University of California leaders promised Wednesday to disclose more information about how much they pay employees.

"I believe we must stay competitive for the best people," said UC President Robert Dynes, who oversees the 10-campus university system. "But we also may be able to do a better job of telling people how we're doing that."

Specifically, Dynes said UC planned to make a number of immediate changes and form a task force to consider other reforms.

The changes come just days after The Chronicle reported that UC routinely pays employees far more than is publicly reported. In addition to salaries and overtime, UC spent $871 million last fiscal year on bonuses, relocation allowances, stipends and an array of other hidden cash compensation. And that doesn't include fringe benefits.

"As a public university, transparency and disclosure are very important," said Gerald Parsky, chairman of UC's governing body, the Board of Regents. "The ability of the public to support this university and the ability of the regents to support this university depend on a knowledge base, and it is important that we understand everything that is going on."

Specifically, Dynes promised that UC would:

-- Step up random audits of accounts used by Dynes and other senior administrators for travel, entertainment and other expenses.
-- Post more details online about raises and other salary actions, shortly after the regents approve them.
-- Give regents a summary of a person's entire proposed compensation package -- not just expected base pay -- when the regents are asked to approve a salary.
-- Provide regents with a summary of UC leaders' total compensation once a year, including outside income. Dynes said he wasn't sure whether that information would be released to the public.

"I don't know," Dynes said. "We haven't thought about that."

Dynes also said he had asked Regent Joanne Kozberg and Bob Hertzberg, a former speaker of the California Assembly, to head a committee to examine whether other policy changes need to be made to improve disclosure.

"This is a step forward," said Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. Callan said the proposals sounded constructive, though he said UC must still answer other questions about its pay policies.

Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, an ex-officio regent, said he had asked the legislative analyst's office for more information about UC's finances in the wake of The Chronicle articles that ran Sunday and Monday.

"There is a dark cloud over the university that we really have to reckon with, and it speaks to the question of transparency and honesty," Núñez said. "We have to ask the university system to take a closer look at what it does."

Meanwhile, some UC faculty have begun circulating a petition to ask the regents to appoint an independent investigator to examine the findings in The Chronicle series.

"There is a lot of outrage," said Bruce Fuller, professor of public policy and education at UC Berkeley. "Is the quality of the university really tied to attracting managers, or is it tied to attracting top faculty?"

The UC regents also received an earful of complaints at Wednesday's meeting that UC is awarding lavish compensation packages to administrators, while raising student fees 8 percent Wednesday and not giving raises to rank-and-file staff members.

"I have a child in community college, and I cannot send her to the institution where I work 40 hours," said Stephanie Dorton, a clerical worker at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law. "We are the backbone of the institution, and if you don't pay attention to the people who keep this university running, it will stop running."

UC for the first time Wednesday provided a breakdown of the $871 million in other compensation that it awarded last year in addition to salaries and overtime.

The biggest chunk, $343 million, was earmarked for employees at the medical schools and teaching hospitals from clinical revenue. Another $172 million went for relocation allowances, fellowships and temporary work outside of employees' normal duties. The rest was split among a variety of other types of pay, including extra teaching and research ($147 million), severance pay and accrued vacation ($54 million), bonuses and incentive pay ($39 million), stipends ($30 million) and housing and auto allowances ($4 million).