COLUMBIA - It was a typical Cabinet meeting for Gov. Mark Sanford in many ways -- he got a budget update, reports from several agency heads and shared an article he read in The Wall Street Journal.

But it was the surroundings like the solid metal cell doors, stainless steel showers and triple bunks in the empty wing at Broad River Correctional Institution that made the governor's 16th cabinet meeting so unusual Tuesday.

Sanford said he brought the agency heads behind bars because the Corrections Department is so easy to ignore, especially when money is being distributed.

"There are a lot of different pieces of government that are not recognized and seen," Sanford said to his Cabinet, which sat behind white card tables in the massive common area instead of sitting around the large wooden table in the cramped governor's conference room.

After the meeting, Sanford said Corrections Director Jon Ozmint's ideas reflect his overall philosophy on government and that is finding new ways to solve problems and making sure taxpayer money is spent in the wisest way.

Perhaps no place in the state government has needed to find ways to cut cost like the Corrections Department. The agency has lost more than $70 million from its budget since cuts began several years ago, Ozmint said.

On Tuesday, Ozmint took advantage of the captive audience to show off some of his ideas like having inmates make the beds and shower stalls for new prisons. He said it costs less than half of what the agency would spend buying the items directly.

"It may take longer, but it saves money," Ozmint said.

Ozmint shared plenty of his other ideas, too. The prisons now teach inmates for the most part over satellite. Officials plan to get an egg-laying operation started this fall that will save about $1 million and get more eggs to prisoners. Currently, inmates get two hard-boiled eggs a day.

Agency employees come up with ideas, too. After several complained about the formal white shirts officers have to wear, some staffers did some research and found more comfortable gray golf shirts could be bought for significantly less.

Before the meeting, the governor and cabinet members toured the factory at the prison where inmates rebuild computers for foster families and make street signs and license plates.

Many of the inmates stopped working and gawked. A prison official explained they don't often get visitors. The inmates in the rest of the prison were confined to their cells as a safety precaution while the governor and Cabinet were inside.

Security was tight. Guards made reporters take off their belts and shoes before walking through a metal detector. Cabinet members and the governor didn't have to be scanned as closely.

The group went through at least a half-dozen locked checkpoints to get to the Greenwood wing, which sits empty but is ready to house prisoners.

Ozmint said it was the first time a governor has been inside a prison since Ernest "Fritz" Hollings visited a facility in the early 1960s.

Sanford stopped and talked to several inmates. The governor asked them how they were doing and how much longer they had to serve.

Sanford said he would pray for one man, who said he was going to be free in several months after serving more than a decade behind bars. He ran into another inmate with 17 years left. "That leaves you without a lot to say," the governor said.

The waste of human capacity -- both in inmates spending some of their most productive years behind bars and guards having to watch them -- is depressing, Sanford said. But that doesn't make the prisoners any less human.

"It's key to have a personal respect for another human being no matter what the condition," Sanford said.