PROVIDENCE — This year, the General Assembly enacted a law to make property owners liable if their vegetation overgrows and damages a neighbor’s fence.

They set stiff penalties for sending unsolicited faxes.

They passed a bill that governs the use of polygraph tests in fishing tournaments.

And they took a stand on the controversial issue of bingo at housing for the elderly, enacting a law that allows residents to bring one guest per game — as long as the guest’s ticket is purchased at least three hours in advance.

In between tackling some undeniably weighty issues — making permanent the state’s legalization of medical marijuana and trying to abolish mandatory minimum sentences for drug charges, an action that was thwarted by a gubernatorial veto — lawmakers passed a bill regulating the weight of boxing gloves and debated one that would have required every public building in the state to set aside parking spaces for motorcycles.

Some lawmakers — particularly those in the Republican minority — wonder whether the General Assembly really makes efficient use of its time.

House Minority Leader Robert A. Watson got grouchy about bills he called “stupid” on the penultimate night of the session, as the House debated a bill by Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Paiva Weed, D-Newport, to require public schools in Rhode Island to hold two evacuation drills and two lockdown drills each school year.

“Just because we’re rushing to get out of here doesn’t mean we should just blindly pass all these stupid little ideas just because somebody wants it,” Watson, R-East Greenwich, groused. (The bill passed.)

At another point, Watson said he felt like a “garbage collector” because there was so much “trash” on the House calendar.

Last week, Watson had this to say: “We spend too much time on ‘pet bills’ that seem to matter to somebody but, in the whole grand scheme of things, oftentimes are too insignificant [and] keep us from what we should be doing. People didn’t knock on doors and promise to champion these causes when they were running for office. They promised to reduce property taxes.”

Some of the bills’ sponsors say they introduced the bills at the request of a constituent or a lobbyist; others say they aimed to address a problem they encountered in their own lives.

Some agree that Assembly members introduce too many bills, or that some of their colleagues introduce bills they consider a waste of time. But ask those same lawmakers about bills they personally introduced, and each bill’s sponsor will vehemently defend the bill’s importance.

THE FISHING tournament bill, sponsored by Rep. Jon D. Brien, D-Woonsocket, came at the request of a constituent who caught a prize-winning fluke in the Fluke-O-Mania Smackdown, a multistate fishing tournament. Brien said the man was required to take a polygraph test before claiming his prize, and was ordered to come to Stamford, Conn., to take the test at 8 a.m. on a Sunday, with just two days’ notice, or forfeit the prize.

Brien says the man failed the polygraph test, and commissioned another polygraph test at his own expense to challenge the results of the first test. The fishing tournament operators refused to accept the results of the second test, Brien says, but the man hired a lawyer because of the size of the prize — $25,000.

The man eventually did get the prize, “but it was a Pyrrhic victory because a lot of his money ended up going to pay the legal fees,” Brien says.

So Brien put in the bill to prevent similar circumstances from befalling other Rhode Islanders. His bill would have required fishing tournaments that charge for entry and offer cash prizes to state the rules clearly in all advertisements. If they require the winner to take a polygraph test, they must allow the winner to take the test in Rhode Island “at a time and place that all participants can reasonably make, at the time of the tournament or within several hours after the end of the tournament.”

The bill passed, but it was one of 55 bills that Governor Carcieri vetoed this year.

If the Assembly does not override the veto, Brien says he’ll submit the bill again next year.

Rep. Nicholas Gorham, R-Coventry, predicts the bill “would have been used less than your typical disposable razor.”

“If you were running a fishing tournament, who would even think of looking up how to conduct a lie detector test if the participant were from the state of Rhode Island?” Gorham asks.

Brien believes lawmakers are bound to introduce bills if constituents request it. “That’s our constitutional obligation,” he says.

Gorham sees it differently.

“I don’t really agree that we’re elected to take orders from our constituents,” he says. “We’re also elected to use good judgment about what’s in the best interest of the state and what can be enforced. I think we need to exercise some restraint.”

A BILL with a seemingly laughable title, “An Act Relating to Criminal Offenses — Grocery and Laundry Carts, Milk Cases, Egg Baskets and Bakery Containers,” addresses a serious problem, say Sen. Maryellen Goodwin and Rep. Peter G. Palumbo, its Senate and House sponsors.

Goodwin and Palumbo said they submitted the bill at the request of Coca-Cola, which has a bottling plant in Goodwin’s Providence district, and Pepsi, which has a plant in Palumbo’s district.

It’s already larceny, under the state criminal code, to steal the items the bill’s title mentions. But people steal the items because they can get “big, big money” from recycling firms that break them down to use as raw materials, Goodwin says. The bill passed this year added soda crates — the sturdy plastic type used to hold multiple two-liter bottles — to the law and added a requirement that businesses that recycle the items ask for government-issued photo ID and a receipt indicating where the containers came from.

Sen. Leonidas P. Raptakis, D-Coventry, said he introduced the bill on unsolicited faxes because of the volume of junk faxes he gets at his business, Venus Pizza, in Coventry.

But it doesn’t just affect him, Raptakis said. “It’s something that affects a lot of people…. They’re jamming up phone lines. It wastes paper. Your toner gets depleted.”

The bill sets a $500 penalty for each instance of sending an unsolicited fax, a penalty that could add up quickly if a fax goes to dozens or hundreds of recipients. The bill, which took effect without the governor’s signature July 7, caps fines at $50,000 and leaves it up the attorney general to enforce the new law through class- action lawsuits.

As for the bill on vegetation and fences, Rep. Helio Melo, D-East Providence, introduced it at the request of a constituent whose neighbor’s bushes were growing so vigorously they were pushing the woman’s fence over.

Far from trivial, Melo said this type of “quality-of-life issue” is critically important to constituents.

MANY OF THE session’s quirkier bills did not pass, but lawmakers still took the time to hold hearings and listen to testimony from the public.

Sen. John F. McBurney III introduced a bill to prohibit retail stores from issuing coupons that expire less than 30 days from the date of issue. McBurney, D-Pawtucket, said he introduced the bill in response to a personal pet peeve of his: hose coupons Stop & Shop issues for 10 cents off per gallon of gas.

The coupons expire 14 days from the date of issue. “I think a lot of people probably go to Stop & Shop because of that 10 cents off on a gallon of gas, and when they go to pay for it, they can’t use it because it’s expired,” McBurney said. “I think if they’re going to entice people to come in and spend $50, they ought to give them a coupon for gasoline that’s open ended.”

“Is it an important bill?” McBurney said. “No. Important bills are ones that can solve the budget deficit. It’s a bill that I thought merited consideration.… There are certainly more pressing issues than 10 cents off a gallon of gasoline. It doesn’t mean I won’t try again next year.”

Minority Leader Watson said his comment about “pet bills” applies both literally and figuratively to one by Rep. Lisa Baldelli-Hunt, D-Woonsocket. Baldelli-Hunt introduced a bill to prohibit people from driving with animals sitting on their laps.

Anyone who drives with an animal on his lap jeopardizes others’ safety as well as his own, Baldelli-Hunt said. If a collision is imminent, she said, people might be less likely to brake hard to avoid impact if they know their beloved pet might go flying through the windshield.

“It really should be a common-sense issue,” Baldelli-Hunt acknowledged. “But any piece of legislation that is enacted is common sense. It’s common sense that you shouldn’t put graffiti on buildings. It’s common sense that you shouldn’t rape a child.”

THE BILL on bingo games actually broadened existing law. Until its passage, bingo games in housing for the elderly were open only to residents — except in Woonsocket, where each resident could buy a ticket for one guest, with the three hours’ notice the bill mentions.

The bill broadened the law so the Woonsocket rules now apply statewide. The sponsor of the House version, Rep. Charlene M. Lima, D-Cranston, says a senior citizens’ residence in her district requested the change.

Lima, who as speaker pro tempore is part of the House leadership, says she has become more judicious about sponsoring bills during her 15 years in the legislature.

“I think at times we do tend to over regulate people’s lives,” she says.

Lima sponsored 23 bills this year, nonbinding resolutions and all. She says it was the first year since her election that she hasn’t sponsored at least 50.

She remembers receiving a phone call from a constituent who preferred restaurants that placed white paper on top of the tablecloth, and was upset that her favorite restaurant didn’t follow that practice. “She asked me to put a bill in,” Lima says. “I said, ‘If that’s your favorite restaurant, why don’t you just talk to them?’ ”

“I had another woman say, ‘I don’t like the kind of people who are moving into the neighborhood,’ ” Lima says. “I had to say to her, ‘What kind of bill would I put in on that?’ ”

OF THE 979 pieces of legislation the General Assembly enacted during the session that spanned January to late June, 42 percent were nonbinding resolutions. Examples include “A House Resolution Proclaiming Jan. 9, 2007, to be Professional Pet Assisted Therapy Awareness Day in the State of Rhode Island” (passed Jan. 9) and “a Senate Resolution Honoring Fernando S. Cunha, Esquire, on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday” (passed Jan. 31). Lawmakers declared June to be Internet Safety Month, and August to be Rhythm & Blues Heritage Month.

The sheer volume of bills introduced this year — 2,729 — leads to a broader discussion of the legislature’s role and its procedures.

“I think this is all evidence that the state would be better served with fewer representatives and fewer senators in the General Assembly,” says Gorham. “We should try to confine our work to matters of statewide interest.”

Baldelli-Hunt disagrees. “The state is facing huge problems, yes,” she says. “That doesn’t mean you can’t address smaller problems.”

House Majority Leader Gordon D. Fox, the second-ranking Democrat in the House, defends lawmakers’ submission of bills at individual constituents’ request. “The system was intentionally designed to have small General Assembly districts in order to keep the legislators close and accessible to the people,” Fox says. “Any time a constituent contacts a legislator, they expect that their voice will be heard on an issue. Although the issue may seem trivial, it is very important to that constituent.”

Over the years, there have been rumblings about changing Assembly procedures, everything from limiting legislative sessions to 125 calendar days, thus cutting them off in early May if they start in January — a proposal introduced this year by Senate President Joseph A. Montalbano, but never voted upon by the Senate — to making the legislature into a full-time body that meets year-round.

Both proposals have been hyped as ways to make the Assembly more efficient. “If we went to a full-time legislature, we wouldn’t have the rush at the end of the session that we always do, where things seem to break down and some of the more important bills get lost,” Rep. Raymond E. Gallison Jr., D-Bristol, said last year.

Of the same proposal, Rep. Stephen R. Ucci, D-Johnston, said: “I think we do enough damage being in here part-time. The last thing people need is to have us here full-time.”

Regardless of whether certain bills are a waste of time, there’s room for the Assembly to economize, Ucci said last week. “There are times when you have 10 people all put the same bill in,” he said.

Ucci’s idea: limit substantive bills — those besides nonbinding resolutions, bills that authorize people to officiate at weddings and the like — to five per legislator. “I think you would see a change in the type of legislation that’s submitted,” Ucci says.

But Fox defends the process as it works now, “pet bills” and all.

“There are probably too many bills that are introduced, but the cure could be worse than the disease,” Fox says. “Who is going to be the arbiter of what constitutes a good bill? … If a member has already reached his or her quota … and then a constituent suggests a very good bill, how do you say no? ... That wouldn’t be fair.”

egudrais@projo.com