The University of California regents have hired a former state Supreme Court justice and an Orange County law firm to look into revelations that the UC president’s office interfered with a state auditor’s survey of campuses, rendering the results useless, regents Chairwoman Monica Lozano said Monday.

The regents hired former Justice Carlos Moreno, who works for a dispute-resolution company called Jams, and the law firm Hueston Hennigan to evaluate inappropriate screening of campuses’ confidential survey responses by staff at UC’s Oakland headquarters. The announcement came four days after state lawmakers introduced a bill to make it a misdemeanor to interfere with a state audit “with intent to deceive or defraud” — a reaction to state Auditor Elaine Howle’s revelation that UC President Janet Napolitano’s office had insisted on seeing the campuses’ responses before they were sent to the state.

The surveys were part of an investigation into the finances and spending at UC headquarters, the results of which Howle released April 25. The audit’s primary finding was that under Napolitano, the office had amassed $175 million in reserve funds it failed to disclose before asking the regents to raise tuition for next fall.

As part of the audit, Howle sent out confidential surveys to the 10 UC campuses to learn whether services they received from Napolitano’s office were necessary or duplicative. A letter from Howle that accompanied the surveys cautioned that officials should not share the answers “outside of your campus.”

But Howle learned that Napolitano’s staff had required campus officials to share their survey responses with headquarters — a level of tampering that the auditor said made it impossible to rely on the results.

Emails between campuses and headquarters obtained last month by The Chronicle confirmed that Napolitano’s staff had directed campus administrators to show them their survey responses before submitting them to Howle’s office. One campus, UC Santa Cruz, had already submitted its survey but pulled it back, apologizing to Napolitano’s staff for sending it in without prior review.

Administrators at three UC campuses — Santa Cruz, San Diego and Irvine — deleted critical survey responses or changed them to reflect more favorably on Napolitano’s office after her staff directed them to do so, the emails showed.

“I’ve never had a situation like that in my 17 years as state auditor,” Howle told state lawmakers at a May 2 hearing on the audit findings.

Lozano, the regents’ chairwoman, defended Napolitano and her office at the hearing but promised that the regents would improve their oversight of her office and its $813.5 million annual budget.

The hiring of Moreno and the law firm to document what happened with the surveys is expected to be part of that.

Moreno was appointed to the California Supreme Court by Gov. Gray Davis and served from 2001 to 2011.

“Justice Moreno will provide expertise in the areas of fact-finding and neutral evaluation,” Lozano wrote in a letter Monday to Gov. Jerry Brown, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Paramount (Los Angeles County), and Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Léon, D-Los Angeles.

As for the Hueston Hennigan law firm, Lozano said only that it would provide “legal services.” She was not more specific.

The interference by Napolitano’s office prompted a bill by Assemblymen Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance (Los Angeles County), Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, and Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, that would make it a crime to tamper with a state audit. Under AB562, each misdemeanor violation could result in a fine of up to $10,000 and up to a year in jail.

“We want to make sure that people take it seriously when the auditor knocks on their door,” Muratsuchi told The Chronicle.

He said that Brian Hennigan, one of the partners in Hueston Hennigan, is “a leading white-collar criminal attorney” and that his hiring “certainly makes it appear that the Board of Regents is taking this matter seriously.”

Ting said he expects that people will be held accountable if the new UC inquiry finds they acted inappropriately. “Otherwise,” he said, “the Legislature will have to take action.”

A report from the fact-finders “is expected to conclude in a timely manner,” Lozano wrote.

The regents did not respond to requests about the size of the contracts to Moreno and the law firm.

Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NanetteAsimov