(Columbia-AP) March 18, 2004 - Governor Mark Sanford says he's considering legal action after the Legislature on Wednesday overrode his veto Tuesday on a massive economic development bill.

The Senate voted 39-4 Wednesday to override the bill, while the House voted 81-24 with no discussion. The bill was originally passed overwhelmingly by both chambers of the legislature, 35-5 in the Senate and 96-15 in the House before the governor vetoed it.

The governor says the state Constitution requires that bills relate to only one issue. He says the Life Sciences Bill (560) covers several topics ranging from a four-year culinary arts program for Trident Technical College in the Lowcountry, an international convention center in Myrtle Beach and a four-year degree program at University of South Carolina-Sumter, "We know this process was flawed and blatantly unfair to the taxpayer. We may find out that it was unconstitutional as well."

House Minority Leader James Smith says the legislature is an imperfect system, but it's the best the can be derived. He says he's not sure a lawsuit is a good use of tax dollars.

Sanford says he vetoed the bill because legislators added unnecessary projects to it. He says he's also considering working with lawmakers to create legislation that would stop the practice of attaching unrelated items to a single bill, "This politics as usual process of tacking on numerous pieces of totally unrelated pork barrel spending to individual bills has raised any number of constitutional concerns." 

The main goal of the bill was to provide college research opportunities and economic development in biotechnology and related fields, and it allows the state to borrow up to $500 million to those ends.

Amendments to the bill included an international convention center in Myrtle Beach, new residency criteria for LIFE scholarships and a new four-year culinary arts program for Trident Technical College.

The governor also said he objected to the Life Sciences Bill's provision allowing the University of South Carolina at Sumter offer four-year degrees. The governor earlier said he favors USC-Sumter cutting expenses through more cooperation with a neighboring technical college.

USC President Andrew Sorenson was also opposed to the bill, saying the school hadn't met a number of academic requirements to become a four-year school, including improving enrollment numbers and bringing in more outside money. He also wrote the number of faculty-published research is, "grossly inadequate for a full-time faculty of 40," though some dispute that opinion.

USC-Sumter and the Sumter community lobbied for the change, arguing students should not have to travel 45 miles to the main campus in Columbia to get a degree.

Sanford, a Republican, has had little success in getting bills through the GOP-controlled Legislature or having his vetoes sustained.

updated 3:28pm by Chris Rees