COLUMBIA, S.C. - The state Legislature expects to get approval Wednesday to borrow up to $1 million to cover legal costs in a protracted lawsuit about adequate funding for rural school districts.

Eight school districts claim the state shortchanges their students in the way it handles school funding. The trial wrapped up seven weeks of testimony a month ago and will resume in January.

Without the loan, the Legislature won't have enough money to continue the case, Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston said. House Speaker David Wilkins said the borrowing would keep the Legislature from cutting operating budgets and affecting legislators and staffers.

The suit "has turned into very protracted litigation - much more so than anybody had anticipated," Wilkins said. "The costs have been steadily rising."

Senate Clerk Jeffery Gossett said the Legislature has spent more than $2.7 million on the lawsuit since 1996 through budget set-asides and borrowing.

"All of it has been run through," McConnell said because litigation costs have surpassed estimates.

The state expects to spend $1 million more on its side the case. The school districts' lawyers expect to spend twice that amount.

"So far we've got about $2.5 million in the case for free and expect to have another $2 million in the case," Stephen Morrison, the districts' lead lawyer, said. Morrison's team is working on the case for free.

Morrison said money has been put into a variety of expenses: three courtroom lawyers and four others writing briefs; expert witnesses and a rented house that serves as a headquarters. That Manning house stores millions of documents and has a bank of computers and three rooms to prepare witnesses, Morrison said.

"It doesn't surprise me the amount of money the state is spending," Morrison said. "I wish they were spending it working on a solution to the problem."

But McConnell said "the lawyers have got to be paid to defend the taxpayers in this suit. ... Lawsuits cost taxpayers money."