Elsewhere on this page readers will find a guest commentary from South Carolina’s Speaker of the House, Bobby Harrell. Mr. Harrell, a Republican from Charleston, was also part of a recent Legislative Workshop in Columbia.

Sponsored by the South Carolina Press Association, the South Carolina Broadcasters Association and the Associated Press, the meeting gave insights into the process and helped identify some of the major players. It also offered some hints on what we will see lawmakers tackle in the session that begins today.

It should be quite a game.

Unfortunately (if you’ll pardon the mixed sports metaphor), it’s one that started with Gov. Mark Sanford throwing out the first insult.

In speaking of his proposed budget last week, Mr. Sanford seemed to be ignoring his own post-election advice to the media that prior conflicts with the legislature should be forgotten. In stating that the legislature had the opportunity to curtail spending yet “didn’t live up to their pledge,” he made the latest comment among several that have essentially accused lawmakers of being disagreeable and trying to circumvent his proposals. In fact, the majority of the items on the governor’s priority list were advanced in the House in recent years.

But apparently it’s all or nothing with Mr. Sanford. Lawmakers rightly have repeatedly shot down his desire to fund private education with public money, and that may just be the bee in his bonnet that keeps things buzzing in Columbia.

To call Mr. Sanford charismatic is not a stretch; to add that he sometimes speaks before he thinks things through is just as accurate. Unless those two attributes can meld into a governor who uses his talents to develop and nurture legislative relationships rather than striking out, it’s going to be a fruitless session. (He also once carried farm animals into the chamber to make his point about spending. They proceeded to “do what comes naturally” and it didn’t sit well with legislators.)

Lawmakers must stand firm in their dismissal of Mr. Sanford’s hopes for tuition tax credits and vouchers for private schools. A program of school choice that is limited to public schools that may be advanced by the legislature is preferable over the governor’s plan. But we just don’t see the logic in aiding some students to leave a “failing school” while apparently leaving most of the students behind in a school that isn’t changing.

We have hoped for some time that lawmakers would understand that it is better to fix a school rather than flee it. And we are crossing our fingers (and toes and eyes and anything else moveable) that this is the year that finally sinks in.

Another area of conflict between the legislative branch and the executive one might be in discussion of an increase in the lowest cigarette tax in the nation. If this is to come to pass, that money should be used for health care needs to provide for the thousands of South Carolinians who depend upon hospital emergency rooms for their routine health care and thus send prices up for the rest of us. Mr. Sanford wants to send the revenue back in the form of tax rebates.

It doesn’t make sense to send what will be a minute amount of money back to taxpayers when dedicating it to health care will in the long run be not just more beneficial to citizens but more financially savvy.

Mr. Sanford will be sworn in for his second term as South Carolina’s governor on Wednesday. The ceremony begins on the south steps of the State House at 11 a.m.

Will it be a term of accomplishments or acrimony?

Stay tuned.