The shiny new fences and stacks of cinder blocks make it obvious that some of the baseball fields at Friarsgate Park in Irmo are new or under construction. Your tax dollars paid for the work, to the tune of $900,000 for the Friarsgate baseball fields and soccer fields at another park nearby.

But you were never told about it, or given any input into the spending.

It's an example of a spending practice known as "pass-throughs". Top state lawmakers put money for their pet projects into the state budget by hiding the money in a state agency's budget.

There's no line-item describing the money, so no one else knows it's there. After the state budget takes effect, the lawmaker gets the agency to pass the money along to his project. Agency directors don't have a choice because the legislature decides their budgets.

News Channel 7 has obtained copies of letters from lawmakers to agency heads asking for the money. In some cases, the legislators ask for the checks to be given to them personally, so they can deliver them.

For example, a letter to the Department of Social Services' director from Charleston Rep. Floyd Breeland asks for $100,000 in DSS's budget that was put in as a pass-through. The money is for an orphanage in Charleston.

Rep. Breeland writes, "DSS should disburse the funds payable to the Jenkins Institute. Please send the check to the following address so that I may deliver the check in person."

Gov. Mark Sanford is trying to stop the practice of hiding these items in the budget. He says it's not right that they sail through the process without the regular scrutiny that everything else gets.

Normal spending must pass through a House subcommittee, committee, the full House, then a Senate subcommittee, committee and full Senate.

The governor has line-item veto power, but can't use it on these because they're not listed on a budget line.

"I didn't even know they existed because, again, you don't even see them in the appropriations process," Gov. Sanford says. "And it's been a longstanding tradition in South Carolina. This is one of those longstanding traditions that needs to go."

In the budgets of just three departments, the governor's office has found pass-through items totaling more than $6 million over the last three years.

Included in that is $50,000 in this year's budget for Spartanburg County. Senator Glenn Reese put the money in the budget to restore the creek channel at the Mary H. Wright Greenway Park and to restore and expand the playground and picnic area in the Priscilla Rumley Park.

Sen. Reese says he's been trying for years to get money for those parks, and he can't believe the governor would make an issue of getting money for parks in minority communities.

The governor says the merit of the projects is not the issue. In most cases, they're probably justified and would pass if they had gone through the normal budget process.

But he says it's wrong to spend taxpayers' money without their knowledge or input. He's issued an executive order prohibiting his cabinet agencies from "passing through" spending items that are not listed in the budget, unless the agency director certifies that the spending furthers the goals and purposes of the agency.

He's also requiring them to prepare a report by November 1st of every year, to be made public, of all grants awarded in the previous budget year.