PROVIDENCE — Lawmakers return to the State House today for override votes on close to three dozen of the bills that Republican Governor Carcieri vetoed earlier this year, including a high-profile bill to ban forced overtime at hospitals.

Legislative leaders, keeping their plans for the day close to their vests until late yesterday, doused the hopes of those wanting an earlier presidential primary, an end to the mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes that Rhode Island adopted in the Reagan-era “war on drugs” and a special-session vote to allow 24-hour gambling at the state’s slot parlors.

But they opened the door to likely repeal of Carcieri’s effort to save money by sending 17-year-old offenders to the Adult Correctional Institutions, instead of the state Training School, a move that on closer look, after lawmakers went home, threatened to cost more, not less.

In what promises to be a jam-packed afternoon and evening at the State House, the Senate also scheduled confirmation hearings for State House lawyer William Guglietta’s appointment to the newly created post of chief judge of the Traffic Tribunal and for Carcieri’s eleventh-hour nomination of Lime Rock Fire Chief Frank Sylvester as the new state fire marshal. The Sylvester nomination wasn’t even announced until late yesterday afternoon.

While the session could drag on well into the night, it may not. In the House, for example, the speaker has limited debate on each vetoed bill up for an override vote to the original sponsor, the majority leader, the minority leader, and the whip from each party. The time allowed for each speaker is three minutes.

Asked why some vetoed bills made the agenda for today’s override session while others did not, House Majority Leader Gordon D. Fox, D-Providence, said: “The next session is just two months away and any bill that is not being overridden can be re-introduced in January. In most cases, those bills needed further study.” In all, Carcieri vetoed 55 bills that were passed by the House and Senate during the 2007 General Assembly session that ended in late June. Lawmakers have already overridden three of those vetoes, including his veto of the state’s new $7-billion budget. Between them, the House and Senate scheduled overrides votes on 33 of those vetoed bills.

With most of Carcieri’s vetoes facing likely override by the Democrat-controlled General Assembly, his spokesman Jeff Neal said: “Governor Carcieri vetoed every one of these bills for very solid policy reasons….I certainly hope that the General Assembly isn’t coming back early to override this large number of vetoes for purely political reasons or to settle scores with the governor.

“The General Assembly has the right to exercise this constitutional power, if they so choose,” Neal said. But, “It seems hard to believe that they all care that deeply about this unprecedented number of bills or that they couldn’t wait until January. The timing and the breadth of this veto override session appears suspicious at best and political at worst,” he said.

And with respect to the ban on mandatory overtime for nurses, he said the governor “does not believe the bill is based on…concerns about patient care or safety. …The bill is nothing more than an effort by the unions to do an end-run around the collective bargaining process. If they can’t win through negotiations, they simply instruct the legislature to impose their terms on an employer.”

Among the key requirements of the bills: no health-care facility can force an employee to work more than 12 consecutive hours. If the bill were “really about patient care and safety,” Neal said the lawmakers would not make “a false distinction” between voluntary and involuntary overtime. “If the legislature passed a bill that banned overtime altogether, that’s a bill the governor [would] seriously consider,” he said

The House Finance Committee will meet an hour before the start of today’s special session to reconsider a law passed just four months ago that required 17-year-olds be treated as adults in all criminal matters. Repeal of the measure is not certain. It would have to clear the committee before reaching the full House and then the Senate.

Senate leaders have already endorsed a proposal to return 17-year-olds to the Training School or alternative non-residential programs for treatment. But House Finance Committee Chairman Steven M. Costantino, D-Providence, was noncommittal yesterday.

“If we do repeal the 17-year-old issue, what contingencies does the department have to realize savings?” Costantino asked. “Until I hear some satisfactory answers on all of those questions, that’s when I’ll make my decision.”

The governor’s office initially said that trying 17-year-olds as adults would save $3.6 million because the average cost of housing inmates at the state prison is cheaper than the Training School. But in the days immediately after the measure became law in June, the head of the state prison system cast doubt on those savings.

Department of Corrections Director A.T. Wall said that 17-year-old inmates would be held at the high-security unit — known as “super max” — for their protection at an average cost of more than $100,000 a year. Wall told a Senate panel investigating the issue last month that the governor’s office did not consult him before the proposal was introduced.

The law has been steadily criticized from all sides as being bad public policy and cost ineffective. Critics include social advocacy groups, the Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, Family Court judges and even the state attorney general.

A letter from Department of Children, Youth and Families Director Patricia Martinez suggests that her department favors the law’s repeal, although it carries considerable costs.

“The department supports the efforts of the Senate and the advocacy communities to assert that youth age 17 and charged with a criminal offense are best served by the Family Court…” Martinez wrote Oct. 18 to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Stephen D. Alves, adding that a reversal would require the addition of 25 full-time employees at a cost of $2.7 million.

It’s unclear if the measure introduced tomorrow would be retroactive, affecting 17-year-olds arrested since July 1. The issue may be a key sticking point. Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch supports a repeal of the law, but said in a recent letter to Alves that making the repeal retroactive would be “the functional equivalent of attempting to unscramble eggs.”

The advocacy community had mixed reactions yesterday to news that the 17-year-old issue would be addressed, while others would be ignored, such as move to amend mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug offenses.

“It’s extremely disappointing. It’s three years of hard work,” said Mimi Budnick, of the group Direct Action for Rights and Equality, which led a campaign yesterday that resulted in “at least 200” phone calls to House Speaker William J. Murphy’s office urging him to take up mandatory minimums. “But the 17-year-old issue — that is looking good. We’re hopeful about that.”

The sponsor of the proposed repeal of the mandatory-minimum sentences, Rep. Joseph S. Almeida, D-Providence, said the leadership told him there were problems “with the way the bill was written.” He plans to submit the bill again in the coming session.

Other vetoed bills on today’s agenda — and Carcieri’s objections:

•Legislation waiving the penalties for motorists who, within 24 hours of being stopped and ticketed, can produce proof of insurance. In his veto message, Carcieri said the bill would create an “unnecessary and burdensome increase in administrative paperwork.”

•A bill requiring automatic annual increases in the prevailing wages paid contractors on public works projects. Carcieri said the bill would lead contractors “to increase their bids” to cover “unpredictable future costs.”

•A bill to extend pension benefits to domestic partners who have lived together for one year and are financially interdependent. The governor has said the public doesn’t want “unwarranted and unnecessary expansions of state employee benefits.”

speoples@projo.com