COLUMBIA, S.C. - The state Budget and Control Board approved spending $26 million to relocate the State Farmers Market over the objections of Gov. Mark Sanford.

The Republican governor said Thursday he was concerned that $10 million in borrowing for the project would affect how credit rating agencies look at South Carolina's debt.

The plan to move the Farmers Market to a site southeast of Columbia in Richland County passed with a 3-2 vote. Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom voted with Sanford.

"The new market has been cussed and discussed since Moby Dick was a minnow and can become a reality," acting state Agriculture Commissioner Hugh Weathers said.

The 54-acre market has been at its current location since 1952 and employs more than 1,000 full-time workers and 1,000 part-time workers.

The new $46 million market will sit on 196 acres. It will be big enough to handle larger trucks and will house a new food laboratory that should draw more business for the market, Weathers said.

Richland County Council last month approved a $19.5 million incentive package to move the market to a site near Interstate 77. That arrangement includes $4 million for land and borrowing $10 million that vendors would repay under a lease-purchase deal.

The state also would put at least $14 million from the sale of the current market site into the deal and $2.5 million from selling the site of an existing food safety laboratory in Columbia.

The University of South Carolina has guaranteed it will buy the old market site for at least $14 million and allow up to five years for the move to take place. That price could rise with an appraisal that's now under way. The university said it will pay what the appraiser says the property is worth and hopes to move college's athletics department to the site across from Williams-Brice Stadium, along with facilities for soccer and track.

Not all of the market's users are happy about the plan.

Lexington County farmer Clayton Rawls told the budget board he would rather have the market on a Lexington County site near the intersection of I-77 and Interstate 26. He's worried about crime around the Richland County site.

"I plan on going to the new market, but I don't want to go mad and broke," Rawls said.

Sanford said South Carolina already has a high debt load compared with other states and is dealing with concerns of credit-rating agencies. "Given where we are ... I don't know if this is the right time to do it," Sanford said.

A week ago, Standard and Poor's said the state would keep its triple-A credit rating, but the company said it would continue to have a negative outlook on state debt. The rating agency cited Sanford's plans to reduce the state's income tax as its primary concern, noting that the state's economy also has been slow to recover and the state's finances are not in the best shape.

State Treasurer Grady Patterson, the only Democrat on the Budget and Control Board, said the state's debt load is small - about 5 percent of state revenues - "$10 million in bonds is not going to amount to a hill of beans in the scheme of things."

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston, said the $10 million shouldn't be a factor with credit agencies because it was borrowed a long time ago.