HARRISBURG — State auditors said Tuesday that sloppy record keeping made it impossible to determine if the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry properly spent millions of dollars in recent years on an unemployment compensation system that melted down during a funding fight.

Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said the state spent nearly $180 million under a 2013 law designed to improve the services at state unemployment compensation centers, but the money was commingled with other spending. He said most of the money probably went to pay employees.

“They dumped all the money into one fund,” said DePasquale, a Democrat, making it “nearly impossible for us to do an independent assessment.”

The department laid off nearly 500 workers and closed three of the eight service centers in December after Senate Republicans blocked a new round of funding over concerns about propping up an inefficient system. By January, nearly all calls to the centers generated busy signals, and those who did get through faced long waits that sometimes dragged on for hours.

“This level of service is completely unacceptable, and a lot of people were left wondering why these three particular service centers were shut down,” DePasquale said at a news conference.

Sen. Scott Wagner, a York County Republican who has been an outspoken critic of how the system is operated, said afterward that additional funding will be a hard sell without massive changes and improved accountability.

Gov. Tom Wolf on Monday signed a law providing $15 million for the system as a short-term fix. Wolf said he planned to rehire about 200 laid-off employees.