COLUMBIA — Legislators tossed aside 28 charges Thursday against Gov. Mark Sanford they deemed too inconsequential to justify impeachment and now stand ready to take up the most serious issues.

The House Judiciary Impeachment Subcommittee will meet again Monday to discuss trips the governor took to Argentina in June and 2008, before deciding to recommend whether he should be impeached.

The seven-member subcommittee agreed without opposition that Sanford should not be forced from office for the 18 first- and business-class flights he took on seven international trips or for the roughly $3,000 in questionable campaign reimbursements he collected.

The third impeachment hearing lasted less than 30 minutes.

Sanford is also accused of using state aircraft for personal and political use on nine occasions between January 2003 and October 2009.

The subcommittee is also expected to drop as many as seven of those flights from their deliberations.

"This isn't over," said Rep. James Smith, D-Columbia. "There is still a lot of evidence for us to entertain. We will completely vet all that is before us."

Smith said the upgraded plane tickets, which were purchased by the state Department of Commerce, and the campaign reimbursements in question don't rise to the level of serious misconduct, the threshold needed for impeachment.

But, Smith said, Sanford does walk away looking like a hypocrite.

"He spent his political career saying one thing and doing another," Smith said. "I think public opinion will convict him of that."

On Monday's agenda, the subcommittee will discuss for the first time a 2008 trade mission to Brazil that Sanford asked be extended to include Argentina, the country where his mistress lives.

Sanford admitted this summer to seeing his mistress on that trip and reimbursed the state $3,300 for that portion of the trade mission.

The subcommittee wants to know whether the trade mission to Argentina yielded any economic development for South Carolina and wants an explanation as to why the Commerce Department shifted policy to accommodate the governor's request.

Rep. Greg Delleney, R-Chester and a member of the subcommittee, filed the impeachment resolution that set the proceedings in motion.

He said that Sanford should be impeached based on his five-day trip to Argentina in June.

The governor left the state with no chain of command in place and misled his staff, who in turn misled other public officials, to believe that Sanford was hiking the Appalachian Trail, according to Delleney. Those actions constitute serious misconduct, he said.

While the subcommittee dismissed 28 of the 37 ethics charges against Sanford from the impeachment talks, the governor still faces up to $74,000 in fines with the State Ethics Commission.

By Yvonne Wenger

The Post and Courier