Sanford's Office Considers Suing Legislature Over SB 560

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Gov. Mark Sanford announced Thursday that his office might take legal action over the legislative process that culminated in an override of his veto of Senate Bill 560.

The South Carolina State Senate voted 39-4 Wednesday in favor of overriding Sanford's veto of the bill. The House of Representatives rejected the veto by an 81-24 margin.

The Life Sciences Act would provide financial incentives for pharmaceutical companies to locate in the state, supporters said.

Sanford said he vetoed the bill to protect taxpayers "from politically driven pork-barrel spending."

On Thursday, the governor also indicated he would look into legislation to prevent the process from repeating itself in the future.

"Beyond the fact that it's an outrage from a taxpayer's perspective, it's a broken way of doing things, and as long as I'm governor I'm going to fight to fix that process," Sanford said. "That's what the taxpayers elected me to do, and I owe it to them to at least investigate the options that are available. We know this process was flawed and blatantly unfair to the taxpayer. We may find out that it was unconstitutional as well."

The governor pointed to nearly a dozen amendments added to the proposal. Among the additions, making the University of the South Carolina Sumter a four-year college and investing $7 million in a new convention center for Myrtle Beach.

"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," Sanford said Thursday.

But supporters said the benefits of the bill outweigh any disadvantages.

"What we're going to be faced with is whether to vote for something that 80 percent of the bill is good and meritorious or whether we're going to kill it because we disagree with 20 percent." said Sen. John Courson R-Richland Co., before the Senate vote.