Community College of Allegheny County trustees voted yesterday to abide by Pennsylvania's Right to Know Law and to conduct an outside audit of certain spending practices and policies that have spawned recent public criticism.

Speaking as the board met in a hastily arranged special session, college leaders cited the need to maintain public confidence in the wake of controversies that have dogged the college of late, including a decision two weeks ago to withhold CCAC's budget.

By unanimous vote, trustees replaced a two-week-old policy for information release that included various qualifiers with a one-sentence declaration: "Requests to the college for information shall be treated in accordance with the Pennsylvania Right to Know Law."

The earlier policy was approved May 22 at the same meeting CCAC trustees adopted a $92.5 million operating budget and $18 million capital plan, which the college withheld for nearly three days until county Chief Executive Dan Onorato ordered their release.

Board Chairman Paul Whitehead characterized the episode as "a serious failure of execution" within the administration of CCAC President Stewart Sutin, which Mr. Whitehead said had left board members concerned, confused and in some cases upset.

"I don't think any trustee intended or understood the [policy] to call for a tightening of college information, and certainly not grounds for not producing something as basic as a budget," he said.

Dr. Sutin agreed the delay was wrong. He said he made what he now considered an incorrect decision to hold the documents back for fear they might give a hint of firings and job cuts being announced the next day.

He said an additional delay of nearly two days occurred because of vacations and a medical leave within the department of marketing and communications that left no one prepared to release the budget.

"That's really what I find inexcusable on our part," Dr. Sutin said.

Despite fallout from the episode and signs this week of growing unrest within the faculty, Mr. Whitehead said discussions with individual trustees in recent days left him convinced Dr. Sutin is on stable ground with the board. "There has been solid support for Stu. I'll leave it at that."

Both he and Dr. Sutin pledged the college would conduct itself with greater transparency and would overhaul the way it provides information to the public. The college said it intends to release a variety of information including compensation and expenses that it has declined to provide for months.

The audit, also approved unanimously, will look at a range of policies and expenditures, touching on such things as relocation costs for executives, employee expenses and the number of people who attend conferences. Mr. Whitehead said the board needed to have a more comprehensive understanding of the kind of information that it now plans to release and must decide if policies need to be changed.

But he and Dr. Sutin insisted there was no indication of any problems with the books that led to the audit. Mr. Whitehead said audit results would be made public.

The May 22 communications policy was enacted after CCAC had endured criticism over its spending -- from double-digit administrative pay raises to office renovations -- at a time when courses and budgets were being cut. Last fall, the Post-Gazette reported that CCAC had spent $48,000 to relocate two executives, including $2,000 in closing costs on a home.

Just before the board meeting, in a sign Dr. Sutin may be facing growing pressure on campus, the executive committee of the faculty union voted to end its participation on the president's advisory council.

Union President John Dziak has cited various concerns, including failure to inform the union of administrative job cuts, which he said amounted to a de facto college reorganization.

Also yesterday, Dr. Sutin said he was unaware of complaints by community leaders in Bethel Park, who said CCAC had canceled meetings intended to keep the college's Bethel Park Center open. The Post-Gazette obtained a copy of a May 10 memo in which Dr. Sutin told employees "the goal is to close the center as early as possible in 2007," but he insisted yesterday no decision on the center has been made and said the e-mail under his signature but written by someone else used incorrect language.