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COLUMBIA -- Saying some of it should be rewritten, the director of the Legislative Audit Council said its report on the state Department of Transportation's management now likely won't be publicly released until at least November.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Hugh Leatherman, appointed a five-member special committee to review the LAC audit.

The nine-member Legislative Audit Council decided that some of the language in the report should be rewritten, said LAC Director George Schroeder. Officials previously had said they hoped the report could be released by Oct. 12.

The report from the watchdog arm of the Legislature will give lawmakers more information about how one of the biggest state agencies has been managed at a time when its leaders say it is in a financial crisis.

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A draft of the report has already been shown to DOT officials, including board members, who discussed the document behind closed doors for two days earlier this month.

"This is not unusual," Schroeder said Friday of the delay. "We are redrafting some of the language and the council wants to meet again to see the audit after it has been redrafted. They made suggestions on how we might state things a different way and we're incorporating those into a new draft which they then will review."

He said the changes are not the result of a request by DOT, though he said, "The agency did meet with the council and we're taking into account their concerns."

The scope of the audit includes an examination of the agency's administrative management, "including efficiency, compliance, internal controls, use of funds, and performance measures," according to the LAC's Web site.

Lawmakers requested the performance audit last year, following allegations of mismanagement by DOT chair Tee Hooper.

On the special Senate committee are Sen. Yancey McGill, a Williamsburg County Democrat, Sen. Wes Hayes, a York County Republican, Sen. Thomas Alexander, an Oconee County Republican, Sen. John Matthews, an Orangeburg County Democrat and Sen. Harvey Peeler, the Senate majority leader, who will chair the committee.

"The review of this audit by the Senate Finance Committee is appropriate and necessary because of the financial impact it could have on the budgetary process," the committee said in a statement issued Friday.

Neither Leatherman nor his spokesman could be reached for comment.

The idea of a special legislative review of the audit report was proposed earlier this year during budget debate but was not included in the final budget provisos.

One DOT-related issue lawmakers asked the LAC to study is the spending of $250 million on private consultants in an accelerated road project program detailed by The Greenville News last year.

Lawmakers asked for the review in April 2005 following Hooper's criticism, which surfaced in a letter to DOT Executive Director Elizabeth Mabry.

Hooper said then he thought funds had been mismanaged and cited the purchase of four SUVs for agency executives, a beach conference attended by hundreds of agency employees and a lack of speed in billing for federal transportation aid.

Mabry said at the time there had been no mismanagement and denied any wrongdoing.

In June, she declared the agency was in a "transportation funding crisis" and asked lawmakers to increase the agency's annual funding by more than $1 billion over the next decade. The agency annual budget is now $1 billion.