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COLUMBIA -- State Department of Transportation Executive Director Elizabeth Mabry told senators Friday that a critical management audit of her agency was unbalanced, inaccurate and unfair.

The Legislative Audit Council audit report released Tuesday alleged the agency has wasted millions of dollars in mismanaged contracts and violated state laws and federal regulations. Auditors spent four hours Thursday explaining their report to two special Senate committees looking into its findings.

On Friday, Mabry and other agency officials spent five hours responding to the audit, taking issue with many of the findings and the methods. Mabry said her agency disagreed with 18 of the LAC's 44 recommendations.

"Frankly, the state of South Carolina does not need to be bashed any more, neither does the Department of Transportation," she told senators.

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Former State Highway Engineer Don Freeman told senators that "the DOT was maligned" by the audit.

LAC Executive Director George Schroeder said afterward that he and his staff had heard Mabry's complaints before.

"We stand behind the audit and we are prepared to defend it," he said.

Three of seven DOT board members attended the hearing Friday and had nothing critical to say about Mabry or the agency.

Sen. Harvey Peeler, who chairs one of the committees, asked if tensions between commissioners over the direction of the agency "had calmed down."

"I'm hoping it will," replied Commissioner Hugh Atkins of Spartanburg. "One of the major problems is we aren't operating like a commission."

Atkins said while there has been discussion in the public about Mabry's future, the board hasn't held a formal meeting to discuss what kind of job she is doing.

Last month, DOT Chairman Tee Hooper of Greenville told Mabry at a board meeting that he thought she should resign. Mabry has refused and has suggested in letters to newspapers that Hooper has attempted to wreck the agency for political purposes.

Sen. Larry Grooms, a Berkeley County Republican who chairs the other committee, said afterward that "my mind is not made up one way or the other, who's right or who's wrong. I just want to be sure that taxpayers' dollars are utilized wisely. And I'm still not satisfied that is being done."

Mabry complained that the auditors didn't say enough about DOT's accomplishments, didn't talk to the officials they should have and incorrectly implied problems.

She said she told auditors that there was no truth to the idea that the agency delayed reimbursement billings to the federal government during the Legislature's session to either hide money from lawmakers or convince them the agency needed money.

But the audit reported there was evidence the billings were delayed deliberately during the legislative session. She said she found the finding "offensive."

Bob Lee, administrator for the Federal Highway Administration's South Carolina office, told senators there was no federal money available for much of the time period in question.

However, officials said there was $200 million available in January 2005 and the agency didn't bill until March. Mabry said she would look at ways to make the process quicker.

She also took issue with findings that the agency wasted money in negotiating a pair of consultants' contracts totaling $253 million.

The auditors reported that they could find no evidence of how the agency negotiated the consultants' fees and estimated that the agency wasted $8.7 million by agreeing to pay fixed management fees even though DOT deleted nine projects from the program.

Mabry produced boxes of records from the consultants that she said document negotiations. She said auditors, who dealt with a subordinate, should have asked her for the records.

Mabry said she also felt criticism about a management consulting firm used by DOT was unfair because it is a good firm and has provided good services.

Auditors said the contract terms were vague and that DOT auditors had not recommended allowing one of the consultants' contracts because the firm's liabilities exceeded its assets. The firm also used former DOT officials, paid up to $120 per hour.

Mabry said the firm had a letter of credit from a bank to offset the internal auditors' worries. She said there was no favoritism shown in hiring the firm, owned by the wife of a former DOT official who also works in the company.

She said doing business with former DOT officials isn't unusual.