IN HIS FIRST YEAR as governor, Carroll Campbell shocked the political establishment by vetoing an unprecedented 277 items in the state budget. Legislators, overwhelmed by the sheer number, essentially threw up their hands in frustration rather than mounting a serious effort to override any of them.

After watching the unconventional Gov. Mark Sanford for five months, many people expected him to increase that number exponentially, returning to the Legislature a bloody budget that crippled or eliminated programs and practices across the government. His reassurances to the contrary didn't reassure everyone.

Instead, Mr. Sanford wrote lightly with his veto pen, slashing just 22 items from the literally thousands of lines in the state budget. He said he went out of his way to exercise "restraint" because he thought it would be unfair to create major disruptions in government at the end of the annual budget process since he was not involved in the process from the beginning.

Even with his restraint, though, Mr. Sanford sent a powerful reminder that he plays by a different set of rules, promising to unshackle himself next year and using his selective vetoes this year to enunciate important principles that he felt were too important to delay:

- Trust funds entail trust, and shouldn't be used as piggy banks to bail out ailing agencies. For the second consecutive year, the Legislature balanced a besieged budget by lifting a year's worth of interest on trust funds, this time taking $5.6 million from 35 accounts, many funded by private donations. Mr. Sanford appropriately condemned that practice, reminding legislators that "We breach our trust with the citizens of South Carolina if we expend these donated funds or their earnings for purposes other than that for which they were donated."

Mr. Sanford said he wanted to save all the funds but could only find enough "responsible" spending cuts to cover $2.1 million in 23 funds, most of them designed to protect the environment.

- Making promises with pretend money is a fiscally irresponsible lie that will not be tolerated. This year, lawmakers revived an abandoned practice of creating a "wish list" of items to be funded if the state collects more money than expected. The list was small compared with those in the past -- $5 million. But as Mr. Sanford correctly noted, it still "creates unrealistic expectations and avoids the prioritization and hard decisions that are necessary in our current budget environment." Accordingly, he wiped it out entirely.

In order to live up to these principles, Mr. Sanford had to eliminate some spending. Some of his cuts were regrettable, but the blame for those cuts should not fall on the governor: The Legislature should have avoided the aforementioned irresponsible practices, ordered its priorities and balanced the budget honestly.

The veto is a blunt instrument; it is better to use the more precise tools legislators have to craft a responsible budget. To that end, Mr. Sanford promises to offer a great deal of guidance when he proposes his first executive budget later this year. He is putting more thought into it than any previous governor, holding his own budget hearings to learn the details of what the various state agencies do, and calling on a special commission to find ways to operate more efficiently.

We hope that will generate the type of debate and prioritization we have not seen in the Legislature. And we have reason to believe it will, primarily because of Mr. Sanford's promise to use his veto authority to take much more draconian action next year if it doesn't.