Lawmakers have spent weeks wrangling with state education officials over legislation they passed to give all Utah teachers a $2,500 raise. Legislators grew frustrated during an interim committee meeting Tuesday after learning a new estimation of the number of certified teachers could result in a smaller raise for everyone.

Senate President John Valentine vowed to call for a legislative audit of the state's teacher rolls "to find out why the numbers got changed."

"I'm very anxious to see that the dollar amount I supported is what's delivered," House Majority Leader Dave Clark said.

The Legislature's primary budgeting committee summoned state education officials to Tuesday's meeting to address rumors about how districts will distribute the raises. During the discussion, it became clear that the actual raise will now be $2,400 before payroll taxes, roughly $240 less per teacher than legislators appropriated to cover district deductions.

"I'm going to have some problems with this," said Rep. Brad Dee, R-Ogden, who drafted the legislation. "It was my intent that $2,500 show up on that teacher's paycheck."

But the amount shrunk when state staffers crunched the numbers because the state's certified teacher rolls have increased since the Legislature drafted the bill two months ago, said Patrick Ogden, associate superintendent at the State Office of Education.

The news shocked several committee members.

"It's very alarming to me to find that [districts] are gaming the system, which is what I think you just said," Clark said.

State Schools Superintendent Patti Harrington attempted to clarify the issue.

"At the risk of jumping into the mud hole that Patrick has already sloshed in," she said, "We've been on districts for years to clean up [their certified teacher rolls]."

She said the impending raises increased the stakes and gave districts more incentive to update the database. She dismissed the idea that districts inappropriately inflated their numbers.

Valentine requested an audit anyway. He said legislators would consider a supplemental appropriation to account for the larger teacher rolls. "We tried to build in wiggle room. We did not anticipate this to be this difficult."

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* MATT CANHAM contributed to this story.