Democratic and Republican lawmakers ordered the audit of the First 5 California Children and Families Commission in the wake of reports that the group, which is charged with helping California's youngest children and their parents, spent $23 million on a television ad campaign extolling the benefits of preschool as Reiner, the group's chairman, was collecting signatures for his initiative.

Assemblyman Dario Frommer, D-Los Feliz (Los Angeles County), joined state Sen. Dave Cox, R-Fair Oaks (Sacramento County), in asking the Joint Legislative Audit Committee for the review of First 5.

"It's very important for us to make sure this commission is properly spending money it is accounted for ... and there is no collusion between a state agency and a political campaign for purposes of passing an initiative,'' Frommer said.

There are also concerns that the commission used no-bid contracts to hire consultants close to Reiner and paid out public funds to people working on Reiner's Prop. 82 campaign.

Both Reiner and representatives of First 5 have denied any wrongdoing and said they welcome the audit. In a letter to the committee, Reiner called on the legislators to approve the independent audit.

"As a result of First 5, hundreds of thousands of children across the state have received health care, preschool and other critical services to prepare them to succeed in school,'' he said in the letter. "I am confident that that any inquiry will serve to strengthen the mission of this important agency."

The First 5 was created by 1998's Proposition 10, a Reiner-sponsored initiative that put a 50-cent per pack tax on cigarettes. He was appointed as the commission's first chairman in 1999 and stayed in the post until last month, when he took a leave from the unpaid job "to avoid any political distractions" while he ran the universal preschool campaign.

That tobacco tax has generated more than $4 billion since 1999, with 80 percent going to county programs and 20 percent to First 5. In 2004-05, the state program's share of the money was $119 million.

Backers of the audit have argued that it's hard to tell where the state commission's work ends and Reiner's political efforts begin.

The groups that have done political advertising and public relations work for the state commission have also worked on Reiner's political campaigns, for example. Ben Austin, a close aide to Reiner, received more than $100,000 for consulting work he did for the commission.

Austin was replaced as the Prop. 82 campaign manager this week. The campaign declined to say whether the controversy over the government payments played a part in the decision.

Although Kris Perry, executive director of First 5, declined to answer questions at Wednesday's hearing, she had said earlier that Reiner had nothing to do with the decisions on what ads to run and when to run them, recusing himself from those discussions after he put together plans for his new initiative.

The decision to run the ads at the same time as Reiner's initiative drive was the unexpected result of last November's special election, said Ray Behr, a former partner at the Santa Monica firm of GMMB, which put together the ad campaign.

"The initial plan was to start the campaign in the fall, looking at sometime from July to September,'' said Behr, who opened his own consulting firm last week. "But when the special election was put on the ballot, GMMB recommended it start after the election, since no nonprofit wants to start its ads during the middle of a $200 million political campaign.''

GMMB also is a likely focus of the state audit, since the company worked with Reiner both on the Prop. 10 campaign in 1998 and in the effort to defeat Proposition 28 in 2000, which would have repealed Prop. 10. Since then, it has received about $170 million in contracts from First 5.

"Everyone was always very conscious about maintaining separation between the state commission and the political effort,'' Behr said. "GMMB is not involved in the Prop. 82 campaign.''

State Auditor Elaine Howle said the audit, which was approved by the legislative committee 11-0, would take four to five months to complete and would delve into, among other things, the commission's advertising spending, contracting and whether there was coordination between the commission's media campaign and the Prop. 82 political campaign.

E-mail John Wildermuth at jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com.