COLUMBIA, S.C. - A little known agency that the House eliminated as it worked on its version of this year's budget was saved by a Senate Finance subcommittee on Monday.

The Procurement Review Panel, a two-employee agency that handles complaints about state contract awards, was eliminated along with its $109,520 budget.

The House's version of the budget would have sent those complaints to the state Administrative Law Judge Division.

"Those businesses are going to have to wait an extraordinary amount time if they are going to go through the administrative law judges," said Sen. Phil Leventis, D-Sumter.

Other senators agreed the panel should stay.

"It has made a big difference in settling problems in South Carolina," said Sen. Yancey McGill, D-Kingstree, and chairman of the subcommittee that restored the panel's budget.

"It's one of the most cost effective things we do," said Hugh Leatherman, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which took up work on the state's $5.1 billion spending plan Monday.

The Finance Committee also dumped a House plan that would have given the governor's office more oversight of sex education programs in public schools.