PROVIDENCE — State lawmakers wrapped up business for the year last night after a rare Saturday session in which they cracked down on teenage drinking, whizzed through an eleventh-hour hotel tax subsidy and rejected the last surviving immigration bill.

A final legislative day that was supposed to end at noon, stretched into night with bills introduced just yesterday flying through the haze, and hundreds more squeaking by during a stop-and-go session that saw committees hold impromptu meetings in State House hallways to vote last-minute bills.

As the sun set over Smith Hill, the House Finance Committee held its final meeting of the year on a second-floor terrace. The topic: giving a special license plate to a retiring judge.

But time still ran out for some of the bigger issues on the legislative docket, including a plea by the financially ailing Landmark Medical Center in Woonsocket for relief from a lengthy merger-approval procedure so it can merge with the stronger Memorial Hospital in Pawtucket before it goes under.

Many other high-profile bills also died in the session’s waning hours.

One would have required legislators to pay 10 percent of the premiums for their state-paid health insurance. Another would have required mortgage lenders foreclosing on houses across the state to continue to provide “essential services,” such as water, to tenants left behind.

Among the highlights of what did happen: the passage of a bill that surfaced just yesterday that weakens a controversial year-old “anti-privatization law” at the heart of Republican Gov. Carcieri’s battle with organized labor. Another allows a state review board to waive the final July 1, deadline for certain businesses and schools to install sprinkler systems.

On the whole, it was a cranky day on Smith Hill; exhausted lawmakers and their staffers seemed frustrated at having to return on a sunny Saturday after what’s been a long week full of late nights and constant moving parts.

Action on the chamber floors was either moving at whiplash pace or it wasn’t moving at all. Hours were spent on reflections about lawmakers not planning to seek reelection. For many, it was a frustrating year. With the state overwhelmed by a budget deficit, there was little money –– or some said incentive –– to take a chance on much that was new.

But House and Senate leaders pointed with particular pride at the passage of bills that provide carrot-and-stick inducements to the use of alternative forms of energy such as solar power and wind turbines. One of the more controversial bills in the package guarantees a 3-percent bonus payment to National Grid for entering into long-term contracts with alternative energy suppliers.

Recent legislative news releases give a flavor of the other kinds of issues that occupied the lawmakers in recent days while their leaders were focused on finding ways out of the state’s financial mess: “Assembly passes bill to increase out-of-state dumping fines at Central Landfill,” and “Assembly protects breast feeding rights.”

Many of the lobbyists said they’re just glad to get out of the session intact.

And when asked to look back at the previous six months, lawmakers also invariably spoke about the struggle to approve a state budget that closed the largest shortfall since the credit union crisis of the early 1990s. The state’s tax-and-spend plan for the budget year that begins July 1 was approved late last week.

“Since the bell rang in January, this budget has dominated every aspect of conversations and decision making,” said Sen. Paul E. Moura, D-East Providence, reflecting on the multitude of cuts the Assembly approved.

“It’s difficult to be very proud when you make some very difficult cuts that affect peoples’ lives in a negative way,” Moura continued. “I think I can be proud that we did the best we could in the situation we were in.”

There were some who left feeling like winners.

That included Rhode Island School Committee Association President Tim Duffy, who praised the Assembly’s efforts to try to preserve education — and pledge up to $12.8 million in additional aid from overnight gambling at Twin River — despite the circumstances. “We appreciate how hard it was for the legislature to be able to carve out a number that gives schools an increase,” Duffy said.

A spokesman for the business community said he was also “thrilled.”

“The Chamber of Commerce coalition believes this was one of the most successful sessions for the business community in recent memory,” said the chambers’ lobbyist David Carlin. “The biggest thing the legislature could have done [this year] to promote economic development and to spur job growth was to leave the tax code the way it is. And they did that against tremendous pressure.”

But Gail Corvello was among the losers this legislative session.

For the second consecutive year, Corvello and other Tiverton residents failed to convince lawmakers to raise the maximum fines against environmental polluters from $1,000 to $25,000 a day.

The bill would not have directly affected the environmental contamination discovered in Corvello’s Tiverton neighborhood, given that it would have applied to new pollution cases. But the local daycare provider spent much of the past two days at the State House as lawmakers negotiated several last-minute changes that ultimately failed to produce a compromise.

Corvello said she’d be back next session.

“No other community should have to live this way,” she said of her current circumstances. “We’re prisoners in our own homes.”

Corvello and about 100 homeowners sued the Texas-based utility company Southern Union more than five years ago after construction workers discovered toxins in their soil believed to be from coal gasification waste dumped decades ago

IT WAS AMOST exactly one year ago that lawmakers enraged the governor by introducing and passing a law just before midnight on budget night that largely blocked the governor’s ability to replace unionized state employees with contract workers, a process known as privatization.

The Assembly yesterday voted to weaken the law, reflecting a compromise worked out between labor leaders and the governor’s office as part of broader negotiations to cut personnel costs in the coming budget year.

AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer George Nee, who helped craft the new bill (which was released publicly for the first time yesterday), said that it represents a concession from organized labor but that the revised privatization law “is still one of the strongest in the country.”

“It lowers the barrier, but we still believe it’s a difficult barrier,” Nee said.

The new law requires the administration to give union leaders six months notice of attempts to replace union workers. And it requires the administration to provide a detailed cost analysis 60 days before asking private staffing firms to bid on the service in question.

In addition, the bill limits who can appeal a privatization decision to the state employees affected, or their union representatives.

The governor’s office has indicated it would “likely” withdraw its request for a Supreme Court advisory opinion given the passage of the law, according to the governor’s spokesman Jeff Neal.

A PLAN TO assist Woonsocket’s ailing Landmark Medical Center fizzled as legislators and state agencies raised concerns about the unintended consequences of changing an entire state law governing hospital mergers to solve one problem.

But hospital lobbyist Bill Fischer said after days of negotiation with the state Health Department and the attorney general’s office, both agencies expressed a willingness to implement “an expedited review” of the plan to merge with Pawtucket’s Memorial Hospital. Landmark had requested an exemption from that review process in hopes to speed up the merger process.

“I think we ran out of time quite frankly,” Fischer said.

While the merger talks with Memorial will continue, Fischer said Landmark will also “aggressively seek out other opportunities for acquisition.” In the meantime, “We have cash flow projections in hand that will ensure the hospital’s operation for the next six to eight months.”

MUCH-PUBLICIZED plans to crack down on illegal immigration ended the session with a resounding thud last night as legislation known as the E-verify bill –– requiring employers to conduct background checks on the immigration status of new hires –– died in the Senate. An angry Rep. Jon D. Brien, who had spent much of the final legislative day lobbying for last-minute Senate passage, blamed its failure squarely on the shoulders of Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Paiva Weed, who said she had concerns about the bill’s constitutionality.

“It’s constitutionally airtight and yet she has decided that she knows better for the people of Rhode Island than the people of Rhode Island know for themselves,” Brien said. “In my opinion she does so at her own political peril.”

AFTER EXTENSIVE negotiations with the attorney general’s office, lawmakers approved a bill to close a loophole in the state’s “social-host law” so police can prosecute anyone over age 20 who permits underage people to consume alcohol anywhere on their property. Right now, the police cannot hold homeowners accountable if they allow teens to drink on their lawn or anywhere else outside a residence.

THE PRIVATE AND parochial school lobby scored a victory in its drive to win more taxpayer financing, in this case for special education for disabled children.

Decisions made years ago about which school district should pay — the one where the child lives or the one where he goes to school — were turned upside down by recent changes in federal law and Board of Regents policy that also lowered the amount communities would have to pay. The Assembly passed a bill –– watched closely by the Catholic Diocese –– requiring every school district to provide children in private and parochial schools with “the same free and appropriate education it provides to children public schools,” no matter the cost. It also returns responsibility to the town where the child resides.

A day earlier at a committee meeting, Carcieri’s policy director, Tim Costa, was armed with a letter from the governor that said: “In effect, property taxpaying parents are forced to pull their children from private school or leave them and receive fewer benefits or pay more to receive the current level of service (if it’s available).”

A SCALED-BACK plan to allow tax breaks for a stalled Providence hotel project moved to an unexpected passage last night.

A day earlier, the legislation seemed on the brink of collapse after House leadership realized that the developer of the One Ten Westminster Street project was seeking a larger tax break than had been previously approved.

The $102-million, 187-room hotel, which lawmakers have said is a boutique W Hotel is expected to create 274 full-time jobs worth $562,239 to the state over the next three years.

A year ago, the state’s Economic Development Corporation approved tax breaks worth that amount.

But a surprise bill submitted last week by Sen. Paul E. Moura, D-East Providence, asked for $1.6 million in sales tax exemptions and included the value of all the jobs during construction.

Lawmakers ultimately OK’d a compromise version, allowing the original $562,239 in credits they said would help spur economic development in the capitol city.

Senate President Joseph Montalbano did not participate in the vote. Asked why he abstained, he said: “In my capacity as an attorney, and out of an abundance of caution, I am recusing [myself] on this matter.” He would not elaborate.

SEVERAL BILLS that sparked the most debate earlier in the session passed without a word of opposition yesterday. They included a plan to change the way food stamps are distributed in this state.

Under the new plan, program participants would only have to prove their eligibility once a year. Likewise, lawmakers approved a plan allowing communities to outfit their school buses with cameras that could catch drivers who try to pass buses while their stop sign is out passed without a moment’s discussion. So did a proposal to allow communities to put red-light cameras at intersections to snag drivers.

And then there were the odd-ball bills that drew more attention than anyone expected, including one that would create yet another study commission, this time to examine the state’s underground economy. The measure passed, but not before a prolonged discussion of what constitutes an underground economy and why it deserved to be studied at all.

It all finally ended last night nearly 12 hours after it began. But it’s not quite done for the year.

The Senate plans to return Thursday to confirm new traffic court magistrate David Cruise, Montalbano’s chief of staff, and a new District Court judge, Mary Elizabeth McCaffrey, sister of the Senate Judiciary chairman.

Where bills stood when the 2008 General Assembly ended:

PASSED

$6.9 billion state budget

24-hour gambling weekends and holidays

Automatic destruction of certain criminal records

Repeal mandatory minimum drug sentences

Early prison release

Pre-voter registration by teens

Renewable energy bonus to National Grid Close teen-drinking loophole

Raise age threshold for two-year elderly license renewals

Providence hotel tax break

NOT APPROVED

Minimum wage increase

E-Verify immigration status checks

Mandatory health insurance

Movie studio tax-credit

Landmark hspital merger plan

$12.6 million Ritchie Bros. sales tax-rebate

Legislator health co-shares

Cell phone driving ban

Eliminate straight-party voting

Foreclosure protections for renters

Increasing pollution fines

Voter identification

Medical marijuana dispensaries

speoples@projo.com