Jon Ralston describes lawmakers’ last-minute scramble, which makes winners out of various special interests while education and transportation take a backseat

Sunday, May 27, 2007 | 7:15 a.m.

CARSON CITY - At 9:30 on Deadline Night, state Sen. Joe Heck killed Speaker Barbara Buckley's bill to die for.

Heck, a Republican, placed the Democratic speaker's legislation to regulate payday loan lenders on the secretary's desk, a purgatory that most often signals a later entombment. Heck had learned a few minutes earlier that the Assembly overseen by Buckley had refused to hear one of his most important bills, a measure to use court assessments to pay for rural medical care.

Taking care of education, which was supposed to be done first, was in limbo. Putting together a transportation package, which had languished for weeks, seemed unlikely.

But as lawmakers caree red Friday toward a midnight deadline, 10 days before the session reached its constitutionally mandated endpoint, lesser games were afoot.

To truly understand the lunacy of the oxymoronic legislative process, you have to see what happens on Deadline Night - when bills must be passed or die when the clock tolls midnight. On Friday evening there was a combination of a party atmosphere, featuring pizza and sushi ordered into the Legislative Building, and a hurry-up-and-wait ritual as the houses played a game of hostage-taking and brinkmanship. Motion (and lots of it) masqueraded as progress.

Yes, dozens of bills were given life or near-certain death (a deadline is never really a deadline in this world). But the education budget, which has to be resolved before anything else passes, still was not closed. And as the governor's stillborn transportation plan was prepared for introduction this weekend, an attempt by lawmakers and lobbyists to cobble together an alternative was on shaky ground.

But the absence of action on those overarching issues did not deter the biennial rush to process bills before the bell tolled for lobbyists, who nervously watched the board to see when their bills would come up, and for lawmakers, who did the same to see where their pet measures were on the depth chart.

In the hallways, bleary-eyed lobbyists fretted about what would happen or basked in the contentment of another client satisfied. Some emerged from the floor session with looks of satisfaction, having succeeded in putting a lawmaker up to offering an amendment that few understood but would save or make their clients lots of money.

Never is the symbiosis between business and government so crystallized as on Deadline Night , when lobbyists, who have worked all session to change wording or insert sections into bills for their clients, see their efforts bear fruit or wither on the vine.

Imagine the scene less than an hour before midnight as a horde of telecommunications lobbyists nervously gathered in the Senate gallery to watch action on a couple of bills that many advocates had worked on the entire session. You could see the relief as they finally passed. Smiles and handshakes were exchanged and they filed out. Whatever had just happened in this thick legislation would be understood more by them than any lawmaker who voted for it and any customer about to be affected by it.

Those lobbyists and those megacompanies were fine. Education and transportation - they could wait.

Legislators have little time to rest on Deadline Night as they worry about their pet bills and are buttonholed by lobbyists as they go onto the floor, reminding them of their commitments or pleading with them to vote one way or the other, to offer a last-minute amendment so they can look good to their clients. Lawmakers take frequent breaks to go to the other house, as Assemblywoman Marilyn Kirkpatrick did to talk to Senate Commerce Chairman Randolph Townsend about those controversial " green " -building tax breaks. Lobbyists occasionally are summoned to chambers by lawmakers to clarify amendments or to see what their clients might feel about 11th-hour developments. It was almost comical late in the evening after Townsend asked to see a Kummer Kaempfer lobbyist and a phalanx of the law firm's representatives soon filed back into the building, having had their break interrupted.

Finally, at a quarter to midnight, Heck's bill was revived in the Assembly, but failed by one vote. Retribution to come, but perhaps not that night , because ensuring the speaker's measure survived was more critical to the so-called process.

A few minutes later, Buckley's payday loan bill was resurrected and passed 20-1 . Both houses adjourned shortly thereafter. Their work was done.

Except, of course, for education and transportation.