HARRISBURG — Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said Monday he has given information to the FBI about spending practices at a Pittsburgh charter school that included billing Pennsylvania taxpayers to develop a charter school in Ohio and to furnish at least one spouse of a board member with a cell phone.

It also included meals at some of Pittsburgh’s finest restaurants, retreats at ritzy resorts and pricey catered meetings.

The auditor general’s office gave the information on Urban Pathways to the FBI early in 2013, DePasquale said. Some was discovered by agency auditors, while other pieces came from a source that DePasquale did not want to identify.

“This rose to the level that we thought was significantly beyond something that was just questionable expenditures,” DePasquale said.

The FBI responded to DePasquale’s office that it was interested in the information and would follow up on it, he said.

“We have notified them and they told us they are taking it seriously,” DePasquale said.

The school released a statement Monday through an outside public relations firm that said the education and needs of students are Urban Pathways’ top priority, but mentioned nothing about the FBI.

Charter schools, which are privately operated but publicly funded, are audited about every three years by the state auditor general’s office. The report comes at a time when charter schools are in the news for alleged misuse of taxpayer money.

Among other things, KDKA reported it found that Pennsylvania taxpayers had paid nearly $15,000 for architects and consultants to develop a new Urban Pathways school in Youngstown, Ohio.

Clautti told KDKA that she was unaware of that and called it an error that she would try to correct.

The spouses of two board members had smartphones and monthly bills paid by the school, KDKA also reported.

DePasquale said that, if accurate, spending taxpayer money on those two purposes is “clearly illegal.” He said he recalled that one board member’s spouse, not two, had had a school-paid cell phone.

In addition, Urban Pathways underwrote annual board retreats with administrators at pricey resorts, tens of thousands of dollars in charges on Clautti’s school credit card for lunches and dinners, and staff and board meetings catered at $300 or $400 per meeting, KDKA reported.

In Harrisburg, a debate among lawmakers is intensifying over long-standing complaints that charter schools are overpaid by taxpayers and are not subject to strong enough ethics and financial disclosure laws. Urban Pathways and many other charter schools make the claim they are underpaid and have filed scores of appeals to the state Department of Education.

Bills that are supported by leaders of the Republican-controlled Legislature are designed to advance the cause of charter schools. Both bills also would create a commission to study issues related to charter school funding and strengthen financial disclosure and ethics laws over charter schools.

Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican, has championed alternatives to public schools and has sought to advance the fortunes of private, parochial and charter schools.