COLUMBIA, S.C. - Gov. Mark Sanford told legislators to spend more on prisons and students and less on teacher incentives and college programs in a $5.3 billion budget plan he released Wednesday.

The 346-page budget also renewed last year's pitch to lower income taxes. Sanford says the change would make the state more attractive to wealthy retirees and executives and help business owners.

The Republican governor calls for the state to spend $7 million on the tax cut beginning in January 2006 as a six-year initiative begins to bring the state's top income tax rate down to 4.75 percent from 7 percent.

Because the first-year cost is relatively low, "I think we have good chance of getting it through," House Ways and Means Chairman Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston, said.

Harrell's committee will decide what portions of Sanford's budget make it into the bill the House will debate in March. "On the whole, I think he's done a pretty complete job again," Harrell said.

The budget goes further in some areas than Sanford had previously described. For instance, Sanford said Monday he wanted to make new state workers wait for 30 years to retire instead of 28 in the current plan. The spending plan released Wednesday says Sanford also wants the state eventually to close its traditional pension plan to newcomers and cover their retirements with a defined contribution plan. That would gives them more control over investments, but less certainty of how much they will recieve.

Sanford's proposal also pays down money raided from a variety of state trust and reserve accounts as legislators tried to head off deficits during the past three budget years. For instance, it restores $25 million taken from a fund for future cleanup costs at a low-level radioactive waste site near Barnwell.

"This is a budget that I think moves us toward getting our fiscal house in order," Sanford said.

Sanford's budget splits all of what state government does into 1,552 separate programs, a marked departure from the way state spending plans are usually handled. It was his way of deciding how the state should spend money or realign programs to cut duplication.

"We need to do a better job as a state setting priorities," Sanford said.

In the end, Sanford and his staff eliminated spending for 67 items on that long list, saving $162 million.

And some programs simply get less.

For instance, Sanford changes the incentive for teachers earning national certification. Those teachers now get a bonus of $7,500 each year of the certification's 10-year duration. Sanford would give newcomers to the program $3,000. Teachers working in critical education areas or certain schools and districts would be able to get an extra $4,500 a year.

"I don't agree with that," Harrell said. "We need to stay focused on improving the quality of the teaching force and this is one of the ways we can do it."

That may not be much of an incentive for teachers to work in South Carolina's lowest-performing districts. State Education Department spokesman Jim Foster said the state didn't have enough takers for a $20,000 incentive to teach in those schools.

Sanford wants to take the $1.4 million saved by making the incentive change to increase spending per-student spending to $2,213, up from $1,852.

Foster said the Education Department is still reviewing the budget, but it appears that Sanford increased the per-student spending by including money from programs that haven't been used in that way previously.

Overall, Sanford wants a $92 million increase in spending on K-12 education to a total of $1.9 billion. But he wants to reduce college spending by $13 million, including a $10 million cut in state funding for research university professorships and programs.

Sanford says college spending is out of line with national levels and that the state has too many colleges. South Carolina spends nearly twice the national average on colleges while it has the nation's second-lowest high school graduation rate, Sanford said.

The "disparity in the rising level of resources devoted to higher education is apparent and clearly demonstrates the need for cost controls and systematic reform," Sanford said. The governor plans to continue pushing to close two University of South Carolina branch campuses.

"I don't agree with the desire to close schools," Harrell said. Colleges are needed to help students around the state get the education that employers are demanding, he said.

Other agencies would get more money under the governor's plan. The state Corrections Department would get an additional $7 million, much of it earmarked for hiring nearly 200 officers.

"Having more guards - that's probably the single most important thing that can be done," said state Sen. Mike Fair, R-Greenville and chairman of the Senate committee on prisons.