In some respects, the session that ended Saturday was a rerun of sessions past.

The death penalty. Stem-cell research. Same-sex partnerships. Open conference committees. Ethics reform. TIDDs.

But lest you think the House and Senate just pressed repeat on their playlist this year, the outcome was a little different.

Gov. Bill Richardson has already signed a repeal of the death penalty. The Legislature gave the nod to open conference committees, and ethics reform made a few steps forward.

And, while it debated other issues — domestic partnerships, stem-cell research and the tax-increment development districts proposed for California developer SunCal among them — it left those for future sessions.

Richardson and legislative leaders agreed that the major accomplishment of the 60-day session was passing a budget 9 percent smaller than last year's — and doing so without laying off state employees, raising taxes or cutting back on essential services. But not everyone was completely happy. One major casualty of the lean budget was the College of Santa Fe, which was hoping for legislative assistance to stave off bankruptcy.

Lawmakers worked all day Friday and into the wee hours Saturday — 3:30 a.m. for the House — only to come back for bright-and-early-morning Saturday floor sessions that ended at noon. They left the Roundhouse tired and in some cases grumpy — as evidenced by an angry confrontation between House Speaker Ben Luján, D-Nambé, and Senate Finance Committee Chairman John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, minutes after the session ended.

And it might not be long until they are back. Richardson and many lawmakers have said a special session will be necessary to deal with the uncertain revenue situation. Richardson said that will probably take place in the early autumn.

"A special session is certain," the governor told reporters at a post-session news conference.

Social issues

Richardson dubbed this session as the Year of Fiscal Restraint, making it hard for social-services advocates to ask for any kind of increase. But lawmakers considered many social issues that didn't affect the state budget.

The Catholic Church showed its influence on three major social issues that sparked lengthy, often intense debates.

In February, the Senate killed a proposal to establish domestic partnerships for unwed couples — including same-sex couples. Richardson backed Senate Bill 12, as he's done in the past. As usual, it was opposed by social and religious conservatives — such as Sen. Bill Sharer, R-Farmington, who said Saturday that the defeat of the bill was one of the most important moments of the session.

But this year, opponents of domestic partnerships were joined by The New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops, which previously had been neutral on the issue. The group's executive director, Allen Sanchez, said the California Supreme Court's decision to legalize same-sex marriage after that state adopted a domestic-partnership law is what led to the bishops' opposition.

Sen. Carlos Cisneros, D-Questa, said after the SB12 vote that the church's opposition led several Catholic senators, including himself, to oppose the bill.

On Friday, another bill opposed by the bishops met its doom. SB77 would have allowed biomedical research on embryonic stem cells. Though the bill had little trouble in the Senate, it provoked a lengthy debate in the House, with several Democrats joining conservative Republicans to defeat it.

"It's about a consistent ethic of life, and this Legislature has done that," Sanchez told The Associated Press.

Bill sponsor Sen. John Ryan, R-Albuquerque, said Saturday that he thinks the bill might have passed had a Democrat sponsored it.

The church also backed House Bill 285, which repeals the death penalty, replacing it with a penalty of life in prison without parole.

Richardson — once a staunch supporter of capital punishment — told reporters Saturday that along with the budget, the repeal was the most important thing to come out of the session.

Late-night drama

On the last night of the session, a group of College of Santa Fe students camped outside the east entrance of the Capitol, holding signs demanding the Senate hear HB577, which would have allowed the state to negotiate the sale of the college, which is at the edge of bankruptcy. Some students spent the night there.

As those students went home dejected. Sen. Smith, who chairs the committee that didn't hear the bill, found himself re-explaining to reporters his opposition, saying the state can barely afford the seven four-year colleges it already has.

But the real drama came on the floor of the House. The issue was SB249, which would have helped finance the initial stage of what eventually would be a 55,000-acre residential, commercial and industrial project on Albuquerque's West Mesa proposed by SunCal.

TIDDs are a public financing process in which the current tax base is measured in the district in question. The developer gets a percentage of the increase in taxes over that current tax base in the future. The idea is that the project and infrastructure built for the project will spark growth in the area. SunCal and other advocates of TIDDs say the method is a good way to create desirable developments and jobs.

But opponents — who include an unusual coalition of environmentalists, fiscal conservatives and rural people — say TIDDs lead to urban sprawl, take existing businesses out of their current locations and adversely affect tax revenues.

SunCal hired a small army of lobbyists and launched a huge television advertising campaign. Even Richardson — who supported the SunCal bill — quipped Saturday, "With that many lobbyists, I thought they'd do better."

Virtually everyone — including many SunCal opponents — thought the bill would pass. It was supported by House Speaker Luján and several high-ranking representatives from both parties.

But when it came to a vote, there were 33 for it and 33 against. You could hear gasps from the House gallery. Because it was a tie, the bill failed. A few minutes later, there was a move to reconsider the vote. But again it went down 33-33.

"For once David beat Goliath," said Sandy Buffett, executive director of Conservation Voters of New Mexico, which lobbied against the bill.

But both Buffett and Richardson expect the SunCal TIDDs bill to rise again in a future session.

Ethics reform

Meanwhile, advocates for another big issue this session — ethics reform — left Santa Fe tired but pleased.

"I'm pretty happy right now," a blurry-eyed Steve Allen, the executive director of Common Cause New Mexico, said Saturday morning, just after the Senate took the steps to send a campaign contributions limit on to the governor.

That measure, SB116, which caps contributions from an individual at $2,300 per election cycle, is seen as one of the big reform bills to survive this session.

Another big move was the decision by the Legislature to open conference committees to the public, something advocates for more than 10 years had tried to accomplish. Richardson has said he'll sign that bill.

But many ethics bills, including one to establish a state ethics commission, died.

Richardson blamed the Senate Rules Committee, where several ethics bills languished for weeks, and some died without action.

But other measures cleared the Senate only to die in the House. These included a bill that would have posted state expenditures online (SB159) and a bill that would deny state pensions to officials convicted of crimes involving misuse of their offices (SB141).

Senate Republican Whip Bill Payne, R-Albuquerque, the sponsor of SB141, was still stinging Saturday from a late-night vote in the House Judiciary Committee. The committee tabled the bill without notifying him it was being heard, Payne said. The committee refused to release the names of the members who voted for and against the tabling motion.

While that refusal doesn't speak much to transparency, Allen said other steps — the Legislature putting audio and video of meetings on its Web site — have helped open up the legislative branch.

"To me it feels more open up here," he said. "People have greater access to what's going on."

Contact Steve Terrell at 986-3037 or sterrell@sfnewmexican.com. Read his political blog at roundhouseroundup.com

Contact Kate Nash at 986-3036 or knash@sfnewmexican.com. Read her blog at www.greenchilechatter.com