COLUMBIA - A bill that strips governors of their power to remove Santee Cooper board members for no reason passed in the Senate on Monday after more than four hours of debate.

State Sen. Luke Rankin, R-Myrtle Beach, one of the sponsors of the bill, said the utility "is a tremendous economic tool for South Carolina" and it needs to be stabilized.

The bill will receive routine third reading today and be sent to the House, where it is expected to pass because a similar bill has a wide majority of the membership signed on as sponsors.

The bill was introduced in the last session but did not pass.

It was energized this year by Gov. Mark Sanford's abrupt removal in December of the utility's board chairman after he refused to pay more money to state coffers.

After that, one of the top three market-ratings analysts downgraded the utility's outlook to negative.

The concern began almost six years ago, when former Gov. Jim Hodges removed John Rainey as Santee Cooper chairman. Rainey sued and lost. The state Supreme Court said a provision in the 1994 government restructuring law gave the governor the right to remove board members without cause.

Sen. John Land, D-Manning, said he publicly criticized Hodges at the time because of the instability it created for the utility.

"Santee Cooper is very, very important for us," Land said.

The utility is the fourth-largest public power company in the nation, the seventh-largest overall. It supplies power directly to most of Horry, Georgetown and Berkeley counties and indirectly to all the electric co-ops and to some cities including Georgetown.

In addition, the lakes the utility uses to generate power have economic importance such as tourism and fishing.

Sen. Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston, also a sponsor of the bill, said lawmakers never intended for board members to be removed at will or the law would not have given them seven-year terms.

Rankin said no one on the 11-member Santee Cooper board has been allowed to serve a full term in years.

That is not good for the utility because it has mostly new members, he said.

Rankin said he thinks that is why the board agreed to the governor's request for money in 2003 and voted to donate $13.5 million from the sale of property. That property belongs to ratepayers, not the state, he said.

That is in addition to the 1 percent of its revenue that the utility pays the state each year, about $10 million.

The bill would give governors leeway over board members.

A cause for dismissal, in addition to dereliction of duty or criminal activity, could be failure to act in the best interest of the utility.

Some senators were concerned that a governor could use that as an excuse to remove people at will, but attempts to strike the provision failed.

Also failing were amendments that would shorten the term of board members to four years.

The bill requires a governor to nominate someone who fits the qualifications and is screened by the same panel that screens member of the Public Service Commission.