COLUMBIA, S.C. - Leather-clad bikers and signs reminding lawmakers about tax pledges dotted Statehouse grounds on Tuesday as the 2005 legislative session opened.

By 9 a.m., more than 100 motorcyclists from a group called ABATE gathered outside the Statehouse to talk about an agenda that includes keeping the state's seat belt and helmet laws as they are.

"We're still opposed to that," Clay Morris, the Barnwell County ABATE coordinator, said of tougher seat belt legislation.

Around the Statehouse, the South Carolina Taxpayers Association put up large orange signs that read: My pledge. No new taxes.

Gov. Mark Sanford, 47 House members and 15 senators have signed the Americans for Tax Reform's tax pledge. The signs are intended to remind legislators of that promise, said Don Weaver, president of the South Carolina Association of Taxpayers. "We just want to keep it in the forefront," Weaver said.

Taxes will be a key issue this year, particularly Sanford's plan to cut the state's top income tax rate to 4.75 percent from 7 percent - a plan he says mostly benefits wealthy retirees and executives and business owners, but that will help the state's economy grow. Other legislators continue to push plans to reduce property taxes.

While Weaver says Sanford's tax plan will help the economy, "I think most of our members would say they want property tax relief."

The House and Senate were supposed to meet at noon. In the House, the gavel fell promptly at the appointed hour, but it was almost five past when the Senate started because Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer was running late.

An aide said Bauer was delayed because he was filming a public service announcement for the Office on Aging. The lieutenant governor's office became responsible for that agency in July.

The House was in session for an hour and about 240 bills were assigned to committees. House members have been doing preliminary work on those bills and the state budget for several weeks. The House is expected to consider 11 vetoes from Sanford on Wednesday and, by next week, begin debate on key Republican agenda items including income tax breaks.

It was slower going in the Senate where members spent more than four hours getting organized, adopting a new set of operating rules and choosing seats and committees.

The House is working on changing rules of its own. House Speaker David Wilkins wants to tighten rules that allow him to remove representatives from committees if they engage in "conduct unbecoming a member." Last year, Wilkins removed Rep. Jerry Govan, D-Orangeburg, from the House Judiciary Committee after a heated exchange with the committee's chairman.

"We should at least consider injecting some kind of recourse or some kind of due process to plead their case," Govan said in a Rules Committee meeting on the change.

"There's no due process in the House," Rep. John Graham Altman, R-Charleston, said. "We are the last and final judgment of our members."

A bill that would allow the governor to appoint the education superintendent and agriculture commissioner cleared a House Judiciary subcommittee. The original also allowed the governor to appoint the secretary of state, but the subcommittee dropped that provision.