COLUMBIA, S.C. - House budget writers began putting the finishing touches on a $5.8 billion state spending plan Tuesday, the first in years that comes with surplus cash to spend.

Gov. Mark Sanford traveled to Barnwell on Tuesday to tell legislators that they should spend extra money on restoring money raided from trust funds.

Legislators raided a fund set up to cover future environmental cleanup costs at the Barnwell low-level nuclear waste site to keep the state budget out of the red during the past three years.

Restoring money to trust funds, including $90 million to the Barnwell fund, should "priority number one," Sanford said in a prepared statement.

"I think restoring the trust funds is very important and it needs to be one of the priorities," House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston, said. "But the No. 1 priority ought to be funding education."

The budget committee's first day was consumed in hundreds of temporary law changes. One of those would implement a hefty fee on blind vendors who run concession businesses set up by the state.

That proposal says vendors with less than $30,000 in profits would pay nothing. But those with more than that would pay at least 10 percent of their profit. The fees rise to as much as 20 percent for vendors with profits of $200,000 or more. The measure was approved with no discussion.

"I feel so bad about that," Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg, said. "And I'm sure the leadership will take steps to make sure we address that," she said.

However, Rep. Rex Rice, R-Easley, said there's good reason to keep his proposal in the budget.

For instance, it's better than the proposal the state Commission for the Blind offered, which would have had the fee apply to all vendors, he said. It also would raise nearly $4 million. "The program will become self sufficient," Rice said. And it will provide more opportunities for the blind to get into business for themselves.

One vendor has net income of $516,601 yearly, Rice said. That vendor would have to pay $97,320 in fees. The next highest-profit vendor makes $157,454 and would pay $22,941 in fees. Most make far less and would escape the fee altogether, Rice said.

The budget committee expects to wrap up its work this week and be ready for debate on the House floor in March.