If that government is best that governs least, Gov. Mark Sanford may have been right this week to veto a bill that sets up training requirements for unlicensed hair braiders. Once prolific along the beach, noncosmetologists who braid hair now face fines and jail terms if they ply their trade without the 1,500 hours of training required of other cosmetology specialists. State regulators put them out of business last year.

But we're far from sure Sanford's veto was appropriate, and not only because it also killed a measure making it easier for out-of-state visitors to get their prescriptions refilled. The governor may have allowed his avowed desire for legislation that adheres to his vision of state power to cancel out a good-faith legislative attempt to correct an intolerable situation.

The hair-braiding portion of the bill would have reduced the training requirement for unlicensed hair braiders to only 60 hours. Now that it's gone, the ridiculously rigorous 1,500-hour cosmetology training requirement will remain in effect for them. For now, unlicensed hair braiders are still out of business.

Sanford promises a full-court legislative press to put them back in business with no training requirement, and to pass a separate bill to help S.C. visitors refill prescriptions issued legally in other states. The governor's track record in shaping legislation the way he wants it, however, is not all that great.

There's no guarantee that the prescriptions bill, shepherded through the 2004 General Assembly by S.C. Rep. Alan Clemmons, R-Myrtle Beach, will pass again. Even if a new bill makes it to Sanford's desk next year, the 2005 tourism season will be well under way before it goes on the books, further incon veniencing visitors, especially seniors, who run out of their medications while visiting the Grand Strand and South Carolina. In some cases, visitors must make expensive emergency-room visits to obtain temporary prescriptions.

Moreover, Sanford may be wrong in insisting that hair braiders need no state oversight. The now-defunct 60-hour requirement may have been too rigorous, but it at least would have guaranteed cleanliness training for hair braiders. Such training seems reasonable - whether at 60 hours or a lower level. Lice and other parasites abound during warm, muggy summertime beach weather. Hair braiders should be aware of how to protect customers from them.

Legislators should revisit both subjects, as Sanford requests. But if they see fit to reimpose minimal training for hair braiders, he should think long and hard before exercising another veto. Hair braiding just might be one endeavor in which the state should take a regulatory interest.

Bobtail blues

In explaining his veto of the hair-braiding/prescription-refill bill, Sanford did not discuss the legislation's broken-backed structure. In apparent violation of the S.C. constitutional requirement that legislation be devoted a single subject, legislators attached hair-braiding provisions to Clemmons' existing measure on prescriptions. Sanford rightly wants legislators to desist from such "bobtailing."

The bill at hand illustrates why, as a matter of principle, he's right. To kill a hair-braiding measure to which he objected (rightly or wrongly), Sanford also had to kill a bill to which no one, him included, objects. If the purpose of lawmaking is to create a better, more rational South Carolina, such games of chicken should have no place in the process.