PROVIDENCE — It’s a frenzied tradition on Smith Hill. On the final nights of the session, lawmakers fly through hundreds of bills with little debate and action so fast that even trained political observers struggle to keep up.

Last night was no exception as legislators gave final approval to scores of bills big and small, including plans to track the incidence of hospital infections, to create a statewide alert system to find elderly people who wander from home and to automatically “quash and destroy” court records of admitted criminals.

As midnight approached, word spread that the General Assembly would return this morning rather than try to push through the night.

“This night was like an episode of Seinfeld,” said Robert A. Walsh, Jr., executive director of the National Education Association of Rhode Island. “Not much happened.”

But Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Paiva Weed said: “I think the public has more confidence in us and we have more confidence in ourselves if we go home, get a good night’s sleep and come back refreshed rather than … try to operate into the wee hours of the morning.”

Up until that point, the Assembly had slogged along with an air of organized chaos with deals were still being made in quiet corners of the building late into the night, and many significant bills still in play at 11 p.m. On that list was a plan to give the governor more flexibility in replacing unionized state workers with private contractors. Another, to offer a Canadian company a $12.6-million sales tax rebate as an incentive to build a heavy equipment auction house in West Greenwich, fizzled after an hour-long hearing.

“What day is it?” a weary Majority Leader Gordon D. Fox asked, throwing his hands up as the House readied after 9 p.m. to debate item 77 of 153 bills on the calendar. By then, attention was focused on what had not yet happened.

For example, a plan that was supposed to help save Woonsocket’s Landmark Medical Center had yet to be voted out of committee. A tense Gary Gaube, Landmark’s chief executive officer, said he and other hospital executives were waiting to hear back from House leadership on whether they would be allowed to suspend a lengthy state-mandated merger process as part of their bid to get Pawtucket’s Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island to take over their struggling facility.

The only one of the much-publicized plans “to get tough on immigration” — known as the E-verify bill, which requires employers to conduct background checks on the immigration status of new hires — also appeared close to death in the Senate after passing the House weeks ago. Acknowledging its likely downfall, Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Paiva Weed said she had “concerns about the bill in the present form regarding the constitutionality, the hardships on labor, in particular the business community.”

Bills to fine drivers who use hand-held cell phones, to require state legislators to pay 10 percent of their health insurance premiums and to raise Rhode Island’s minimum wage seemed lifeless as well.

Between the spurts of floor action in both chambers throughout the evening, some lawmakers played cards in a basement office while impromptu committee meetings broke out with no notice and no way for the public to even find them.

“It’s horrible,” said Christine Lopes, director of the government watchdog group Common Cause, said of the volume of legislation passed in the last three days by lawmakers who have been at the State House for six months. “To cram this number of bills through in this short period of time doesn’t allow for true discourse and true debate.”

Others took in the scene with a shrug. The final night is always a blur, they said.

Portsmouth Sen. Charles J. Levesque emphasized that despite the rush, lawmakers have dealt with the legislation for weeks if not months prior to last night’s voting. “Unless you have a deadline when you know you have to get it done, the natural human tendency is to put it off. And here we are … Would I prefer a more measured approach throughout the whole session? Yeah, I guess so.”

Early in the night, the Assembly approved plans to change the state’s Open Records Law, cutting to 7 days from 10 the time the public and the media must wait to receive requested public records. The legislation also requires the release of basic arrest information within 24 hours.

With no discussion, the Assembly also OK’d creating a statewide notification system for the elderly not unlike the Amber Alert system for missing children. When an elderly person disappears and is deemed in danger, the system will require the state police to notify broadcast media, coordinate law-enforcement search efforts and trigger automated call systems. State Police Col. Brendan Doherty has opposed the plan, saying it could overwhelm the police force.

BUT SOME late-flying bills failed, among them a measure sought by North Providence Mayor Charles Lombardi to block the development of the 15-acre Camp Meehan site. The bill allowing North Providence to take the property by eminent domain emerged yesterday from a House Committee whose members include the developer’s son, Rep. Peter Petrarca, D-Lincoln.

But once it hit the House floor, Rep. John McCauley urged defeat on grounds that the current owner, Capitol City Community Centers, has a $1-million purchase-and-sales agreement for the land, formerly zoned for 54 house lots, and is in court challenging the current zoning. “Let the courts decide,” he argued. The bill went down on a 16-to-39 vote.

On the Senate side, lawmakers easily passed a bill mandating that inmates to be released from the Adult Correctional Institutions be freed on a weekday, instead of a weekend or holiday. Introduced at the request of the state Department of Corrections, the bill is intended to make sure inmates have immediate access to social services when their sentence ends. The House hadn’t yet taken up that proposal yet.

The bill to “quash and destroy” criminal records cleared its final legislative hurdle — the Senate — on a 22-to-10 vote.

Passed by the lawmakers over the objections of the governor, state police and attorney general, the bill would destroy after five years, in most cases, the records of people given “deferred” prison sentences after pleading no-contest or guilty to a crime. This was the sentence given, for example, to one of the admitted co-conspirators in the Lincoln bribery scandal, the executive secretary for the Barrington police chief who pleaded no contest to embezzling town money and the admitted accomplice to a gunpoint robbery in Waterplace Park who traded testimony for a reduced sentence.

Advocates say clean records are essential to the kinds of jobs that would provide an individual a second chance. For example, current state law bars people with certain felony convictions from obtaining state licenses to work in nursing, social work and auto repair; this would provide a way around that. But opponents question how employers, including nursing homes, child care centers and the state can do required background checks if criminal records are erased.

Current law allows a judge to expunge a single nonviolent offense from the record of a first-time offender five years after the individual has completed a sentence for a misdemeanor, or 10 years after completing a sentence for a felony. This bill is not limited to youthful offenses, first-time offenders or even nonviolent crimes. Cosponsors included Representatives Joseph Almeida, D-Providence, Grace Diaz, D-Providence, Nicholas Mattiello, D-Cranston, and Frank Ferri, D-Warwick.

And then there were the surprise bills that either surfaced or got hearings for the first time last night — part of the crucial end-of-the-year trading between House and Senate leaders.

The Assembly appears poised, for example, to approve a bill not yet introduced, that would give Governor Carcieri more flexibility in replacing unionized state workers with private contractors, a practice known as privatization.

The bill would weaken what was among the more controversial laws approved in the final days of last year’s Assembly session giving anyone affected by privatization — program recipients, state employees or unions — 60 days to appeal privatization decisions to a Superior Court judge.

Carcieri argued that the law essentially blocked him from saving personnel costs by introducing competition to the state’s workforce. The issue was at the heart of the Republican governor’s battle with labor unions.

The state Supreme Court was scheduled to review the constitutionality of the statute later this year. But labor leaders worked with the governor’s office in recent days to craft the compromise legislation as part of larger negotiations to save taxpayers tens of millions of dollars for the coming year.

The governor’s office will “likely” withdraw its request for a Supreme Court advisory opinion should the law be passed, according to the governor’s spokesman Jeff Neal.

LAST-MINUTE surprises were the order of the evening:

Lawmakers spent an hour dissecting a bill — that unexpectedly popped out of the Senate on Tuesday — that would have provided a $12.6-million sales-tax rebate to the Ritchie Brothers, a Canadian company proposing to build a heavy equipment auction house on 240 acres at the intersection of Routes 95 and 102 in West Greenwich.

Across from the state’s only 24-hour truck stop, the site is currently home to Raven Construction Company.

During what he acknowledged was an unexpected hour-long hearing last night, Ritchie Brothers’ lobbyist Frank McMahon talked up the potential benefits, including 15 to 25 permanent full-time jobs, three times that many in the lead-ups to the anticipated four to six big auctions each year.

But Gary Sasse, director of the state Department of Revenue, said: “The fundamental question is: why are we going to spend [$12.6 million] in tax expenditures to create 25 jobs? ... The thing doesn’t pay for itself. It makes no economic sense.”

Sasse told the lawmakers that Carcieri was likely to veto the bill if it hit his desk.

At 9 p.m., House Finance Chairman Steven Costantino, D-Providence, said the proposal was still in play and a decision would be made “during the break” at legislative leadership levels above him. At 11 p.m., however, the lawmakers shelved the bill for the year with a vote for “further study.”

Also waiting in limbo late last night was a last-minute plan to resuscitate a stalled Providence hotel project. Having received attention from key lawmakers earlier in the day, the plan seemed ready to collapse once House leadership realized that the developer was seeking a larger tax break than had been previously approved.

That sent the bill’s sponsors scrambling around the building trying to bring it back to life, apparently without success. (Story, Page A5).

Technically, even today’s session won’t end the 2008 legislative session. The Senate is already planning to return next Thursday to endorse the appointment of Mary E. McCaffrey to lead the District Court bench.

McCaffrey, 46, of Warwick, is currently a Family Court magistrate and a sister of Senate Judiciary Chairman Michael J. McCaffrey, D-Warwick.

That news came the same day that the judiciary announced the decision to make a top Senate staff member a Rhode Island Traffic Tribunal magistrate.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank J. Williams officially tapped R. David Cruise, a former senator and chief of staff to Senate President Joseph Montalbano, for a 10-year term.

A statement from the judiciary notes that the decision was made “in consultation” with Traffic Tribunal Chief Magistrate William R. Guglietta, who until recently was chief legal counsel to House Speaker William J. Murphy.

Several hours after the appointment was announced, the Senate OK’d a plan to allow the state to borrow $88 million for a new Blackstone Valley Courthouse in Smithfield. The House had approved the measure the night before. Construction isn’t expected to start at least until 2010.

— With reports from staff writer Daniel Barbarisi

cneedham@projo.com