COLUMBIA - As the head of the watchdog group Common Cause, it is John Crangle's job to call attention to problems in how government works.

Yet even he gets a little flustered when trying to explain how, and on what, state government spends taxpayer money.

"There's a major transparency problem in South Carolina because so much of the information in the budget is disguised and hidden," Crangle said.

"Even very few legislators understand it."

That could soon change, thanks to an idea Gov. Mark Sanford is borrowing from the state of Washington.

For the first time, Crangle and anyone else who is curious will be able to look at a list of the more than 1,500 separate activities state government spends money on.

That will include everything, including the state's programs to improve education and its efforts to promote the sale of lottery tickets.

It is part of Sanford's activities-based budget, expected to be released soon, which is designed to shed light on how government operates.

"It's simply an idea that will work better than the current budget paradigm we're locked in," Sanford said.

The overall approach is similar to a zero-based budgeting system used by some businesses. Instead of using the previous year's spending as a starting point, the budget is built from the ground up each year.

Just compiling a comprehensive list of government activities was a surprisingly tough job, Sanford said.

"It was fascinating that so many of these state agencies could not put a price tag on some of the things they did," he said.

In Washington, the budget approach was spearheaded by Democratic Gov. Gary Locke, a Yale-educated former prosecutor. It was borne out of necessity: an enormous $2.6 billion deficit.

"We had a big problem that we needed to address in a hurry," said Lynne McGuire, operations manager at Washington's Office of Financial Management.

Now in the second year of a two-year budget cycle, the budget approach has been embraced by academics, business groups and policy wonks alike.

The state's chamber of commerce called Locke's budget "the dose of cod liver oil our state needs for its economy to recover."

But not everyone is enamored with the process.

K-12 education was slashed by a $650 million in Washington. Although that represented less than 10 percent of education spending for the two-year budget, it was the largest percentage decrease in any area.

And two voter-initiated programs, one to reduce class size and another to give teachers cost-of-living adjustments, were suspended as a result of the budget.

"It can be a good system, but it depends on a good, public discussion of the issues," said Rich Wood, spokesman for the Washington Education Association. "K-12 education was essentially shut out until after the decisions had been made."

Those decisions were made by hand-picked budget teams, including business leaders, policy experts and government bureaucrats, who proposed which programs should get more money, which should get less and which should be eliminated.

One major difference between how Washington does its budget and how Sanford's office did it this year is public input.

In South Carolina, major decisions will fall to Sanford and his budget team, who went through rounds of public budget hearings this fall.

Washington officials invited business leaders to join the budget teams and held a series of large public forums to let residents weigh in on how their tax dollars should be spent.

Sanford said time did not allow for that this year, but he held it out as a possibility for future budget years.

Richard Young, a researcher with the University of South Carolina's Institute for Public Service and Policy Research, said the approach is state of the art.

But, he said, it is not a panacea to lengthy budget battles between a governor and lawmakers.

The hope, Young said, is that the public will gain insight into what lawmakers are fighting over, and how it fits into overarching state goals.

"The traditional way is interested in the status quo; this is more creative," Young said. "I've been looking at this stuff for 20-some years, and this is the first time I've seen anything this good in South Carolina."

Leaders in the state House and Senate have given an early thumbs up to the "activities-based" approach.

Common Cause's Crangle remains skeptical. He said if Sanford's specific budget proposals fail to gain steam, the whole process he used could be discredited.

Sanford said that's a risk he is willing to take.