COLUMBIA - Gov. Mark Sanford vetoed a bill Thursday that would limit fines on some ethics law violations to no more than $5,000, using the opportunity to give the Legislature a lecture on conducting its business in the open.

The State Ethics Commission had asked for the cap because a 2003 law change sent fines soaring. Before, the fines were capped at $500, but the 2003 law eliminated the cap, allowing fines to grow daily.

Legislators had hoped that open-ended fines would encourage compliance with the law, but it led to unintended, large fines the commission said it had no hopes of ever collecting.

Through April, the commission reported more than $1.2 million in unpaid penalties for paperwork violations. For instance, Greenville City Council candidate William C. Mitchell owes $242,900, North Charleston City Council candidate Louin Poston owes $140,596 and Eastover Town Councilman Richard Johnson owes $90,300, the commission said.

House Speaker Bobby Harrell said he was not aware of any pending fines against state lawmakers.

The bill passed this year would give the biggest debtors a break on the fines.

'The Ethics Commission asked for the legislation,' said Harrell, R-Charleston.

But in his veto letter, Sanford called it 'the latest and most disturbing example of the Legislature's retreat from the ethics reforms it passed in the wake of the Operation Lost Trust scandal.'

That FBI vote-selling sting prompted a sweeping overhaul of the state's ethics laws in 1991 that tightened reporting requirements and outlawed lobbyists handling political contributions.

Sanford wrote 'we have fallen back to a time where special interests are once again making inroads into the legislative process' and he was 'very concerned about the recent trend in the General Assembly toward a closed, secretive system.'

The chairmen of the House and Senate ethics committees were not available for comment Thursday.

In his veto message, the governor also took the Legislature to task for only taking recorded roll call votes 13 percent of the time since he took office in 2003. With the ethics bill, the Senate passed a proposal 'that would lower ethics standards and bail out legislators for past violations of the ethics laws' with a non-recorded voice vote, Sanford wrote.