How can a $240 million bill meant to upgrade hundreds of buildings, patch up state roads and pay for water monitoring die in the final minutes of the legislative session Saturday?

It was because a bill that was supposed to be about jobs ended up being about politics.

How the bill died offers a window into the arcane nature of the legislative process and how it works — or, as in this case, doesn't work.

The story involves late-night meetings, secrecy, bickering lawmakers and a filibuster in the final minutes of the session.

It all started late Friday night, with less than 24 hours to go in the 60-day legislative session. The House's tax-writing committee convened a late-night meeting in which members added projects to Senate Bill 218, the capital-outlay legislation, including $7 million for critical water and wastewater-treatment facilities and $11 million to address completion of projects around the state.

Also added was $180,000 for a project on Superman Canyon Road in McKinley County for Rep. Sandra Jeff, D-Crownpoint.

Rep. Patricia Lundstrom, D-Gallup, was bothered by the secrecy surrounding the late-night additions, she said Monday.

"All I knew was that there were big chunks of money in that bill, and no one knew how it would be spent," Lundstrom said.

She wasn't the only one.

"A lot of us didn't know that there were amendments until afterward because we were on the floor," said Sen. Lynda Lovejoy, D-Crownpoint. "Those were the shenanigans pulled in there in the 11th hour, always in the House."

Jeff's project was a way of winning the Crownpoint Democrat's vote for the legislation, Lovejoy said.

Jeff disputed Lovejoy's account Monday, castigating her fellow Navajo.

"Lovejoy should be ashamed of herself. This shows it is a personal vendetta against me," Jeff said.

The House's tax-writing committee added projects because senators already had put their projects in the bill, and House lawmakers got the same opportunity, Jeff said.

In the early hours of Saturday, a few hours after the tax-writing committee's amendments were added, they were removed at Lundstrom's request by the House Appropriations and Finance Committee. At the same time, $30 million was diverted to the state road fund in the capital-outlay bill, beefing up that pot of money to $60 million, Lundstrom said.

The late-night back-and-forth provoked fireworks on the House floor Saturday morning.

As the Legislature neared adjournment, Rep. Thomas Garcia, D-Ocate, rose to try to strip Lundstrom's amendment from the capital-outlay bill during the House floor session.

Lundstrom responded by talking. For the next 55 minutes, from 10:50 a.m. to 11:45 a.m., Lundstrom held the floor, killing perhaps dozens of bills as she spoke.

"I was berserk," Lundstrom said Monday, referring to Garcia's motion to strip dollars for the state road fund and to put that money back into projects no one seemed to know anything about. "I wasn't going to let go of that mike even if it meant every bill died on that agenda," Lundstrom said.

Garcia eventually retreated from his motion, and Lundstrom backed off her filibuster. The House passed the capital-outlay bill with only minutes to spare in the legislative session.

The capital-outlay bill arrived in the Senate, which also had to pass the legislation. With five minutes or so left in the session, Lovejoy rose to debate the bill, effectively killing it.

What Lundstrom didn't know Saturday, she said Monday, was that many of the projects her amendments removed from the capital-outlay bill were Gov. Susana Martinez's projects.

On Monday, the Governor's Office took aim at Lundstrom for her last-minute theatrics.

"The governor had pushed for capital funds to be spent on completing unfinished projects and making necessary capital upgrades and repairs," said Scott Darnell, Martinez's spokesman. "It is unfortunate that Rep. Lundstrom attempted to strip funding for these capital projects in order to try to significantly increase spending on roads."

Lundstrom was unbowed.

"We still have a right to know. I don't care whose projects they were," Lundstrom said.

Sen. Carlos Cisneros, D-Questa, the capital-outlay bill's sponsor, said Monday that there wasn't a single culprit in the legislation's death, but many. He included among them a personal feud between Lundstrom and Jeff that erupted over the $180,000 road project in McKinley County that was added late Friday by the House Taxation and Revenue Committee.

Lundstrom and Jeff have a well-known history and were involved in a December 2009 confrontation in which Lundstrom accused Jeff of assaulting her — an allegation Jeff denied at the time. Police were called in to investigate.

"It was one vs. the other. They were trying to one-up the other," Cisneros said.

Lundstrom disputed Cisneros' accusation, calling it "crazy."

Jeff, on the other hand, said Lundstrom, along with Lovejoy, disliked her.

Jeff, who parted ways with her Democratic colleagues on several controversial votes this session, said her independence made Lundstrom "look bad" as the House Democrats' caucus chairwoman.

In that position, Lundstrom is tasked with keeping Democrats in line for big votes.

While state lawmakers bickered over who killed this year's capital-outlay bill, the effects of its demise weren't hard to find in Santa Fe.

Roughly $128,000 in the bill would have paid for roofing and other improvements at Mary Esther Gonzales Senior Center, according to Ike Pino, director of the city of Santa Fe's Community Services Department.

"We built that thing in 1976. It's a little bit old," Pino said. "It's disappointing."

Contact Trip Jennings at 986-3050 or at tjennings@sfnewmexican.com.

PROJECTS THAT DIED WITH CAPITAL-OUTLAY BILL

• Edgewood Senior Center: Santa Fe, $7,150

• Mary Esther Gonzales Senior Center: Santa Fe, $128,467

• Runnels Building renovation and South Capitol campus improvements: $2 million

• Indian water-rights settlement: $15 million