COLUMBIA--Gov. Mark Sanford's casual dress and manner in his summer budget hearings hardly convey how serious he is about writing his first executive budget, which he says will be "a couple hundred-million bucks in the hole."

Instead, he says, his clothes are comfortable; he can think better and it promotes a relaxing environment to exchange new ideas.

"What I'm about is substance over form. And what these hearings are about has been a whole lot of substance, rather than everybody getting dressed up and sort of mechanical back and forth and no real hard questions get asked," Sanford said. Sanford said people in government have failed to ask a simple question: Why? "What we've constantly asked in these different hearings is 'Why do you do it that way? Why couldn't we privatize it?' "

Sanford asks a lot of direct, candid questions, and the governor routinely invites the public, who sit on chairs surrounding the table, to raise concerns. If observers shrug their shoulders or mumble something, Sanford is likely to call on them to express a dissatisfaction.

He likes to say it's "probing" instead of being critical, but some agency directors have left the small conference room flustered.

In one heated round, Sanford continually pressed Department of Health and Environmental Control Commissioner Earl Hunter on his agency's divergent missions. After several exchanges, Hunter conceded that some operations at DHEC are completely unrelated, such as protecting wetlands and diagnosing tuberculosis.

"You don't want to make anyone feel uncomfortable, but I got a fiduciary responsibility back to the taxpayer, who's the guy I ultimately work for," Sanford said.

Some agency heads prepared by sending staff to other meetings.

School for the Deaf and Blind President Sheila Breitweiser called another agency director to see what she should expect. She worked all weekend to prepare, but she said she was very nervous.

"I came kind of going, 'What's this going to be like?' And it really ended up being a nice session," Breitweiser said, adding the governor's style was very relaxing.

Sanford, who usually sits in a plain wood folding chair with a hard back, will sometimes get up and stretch or walk around the room during a meeting.

He whispers often to his chief of staff Fred Carter, and when conversation begins to drown in numbers or specificity, he brings everything to a halt. Then he gets back to the issues -- what can the agency afford to cut and what programs must be funded?