ANYONE WHO IS familiar with the State House knows that our Legislature makes a practice of stringing together tangentially related — sometimes even completely unrelated — matters into a single bill, and then sliding them through the process without proper debate and occasionally even without most people knowing what’s happening.

That’s how the Legislature legalized video poker. It’s how the Legislature passed a bribery-tainted retroactive tax cut a decade ago. It’s how we get pork-barrel spending. And it’s how we ended up with an economic development incentive bill that also creates a four-year state university in Sumter and a four-year culinary arts program at a Charleston technical college and a convention center in Myrtle Beach and a host of other special goodies.

Even legislators acknowledge this practice, which they refer to as “bobtailing.” And most denounce it — on those occasions when they don’t like the contents of what they call “Christmas tree” or “kitchen sink” bills.

So let’s drop all the feigned innocence and outrage over Gov. Mark Sanford’s contention that the Life Sciences bill violates the state constitution. Of course it does. If by some bizarre interpretation of the plain words of the constitution it could be determined that this particular bill doesn’t, there still are countless other bills that legislators pass every year that do violate the requirement that bills “relate to but one subject.” And we need to put a stop to that.

Last week, Mr. Sanford delayed what was widely expected to be an announcement that he was asking the Supreme Court to declare the new law unconstitutional. Instead, he said after meeting with legislators that while he still might bring a lawsuit, for now he had decided to “take them at their word that there is a willingness to fix this thing legislatively.”

That is the appropriate course, even though following it through would have the heavy price of guaranteeing that the abominable law stands. While a constitutional disagreement between the governor and the Legislature is one of those very rare public policy questions that is appropriate for the court to resolve, it is generally better for elected officials to reach a political solution rather than involve the judiciary.

But one thing needs to be clear: This is a matter that needs to be resolved, and it needs to be resolved in favor of greatly reducing bobtailing. The practice is antithetical to good government: It shuts the public, and sometimes the legislators themselves, out of the law-making process, by hiding the true meaning of legislation until it’s too late to do anything about it; and it thwarts the will of the majority, by allowing narrow minorities to form coalitions and string together pet projects and ideas that could never pass if they had to stand on their own.

If legislators are willing to address this problem by passing a law and legislative rules or, better still, a constitutional amendment to spell out in greater detail precisely what is and what isn’t allowed, then that is what should happen. Their willingness and their ability to do this should become apparent rather quickly, and so it should become apparent rather quickly whether the governor needs to proceed with a lawsuit.

But if lawmakers do not take action quickly to see to it that bobtailing is greatly curtailed, then the governor will have no choice but to ask the Supreme Court to do so. And he should not hesitate to do that.