Sep. 12--SACRAMENTO -- Blowing past a midnight deadline to pass bills that were months in the making, frazzled California lawmakers spent Friday night and early Saturday casting a flurry of votes in hopes of salvaging a legislative session marred by the budget debacle.

But in the end they fell short on one of the biggest issues before them: water reform.

And as the clock ticked away, it wasn't until nearly 6 a.m. the Legislature sent the governor both of the other two proposals that had emerged as the session's signature issues -- prison reform and renewable energy mandate.

Not surprisingly, it was most ambitious of the three, the plan to overhaul the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, that had to be tabled late Friday after legislative leaders said they couldn't muster the votes to push the package through.

"We came close," Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, said before the session finally adjourned at 6:20 a.m., "and we came closer than we've come sinc ethe last decade

Coming in just under the wire was the push to increase renewable energy mandates in the state, hailed by lawmakers as a bill that would make California a national leader on clean power.

That proposal, sponsored by Democratic Sen. Joe Simitian of Palo Alto and others, would boost already-ambitious requirements that California power utilities use more "green" energy.

The hangup stemmed from concerns shared by the governor's office, Simitian

said, and it was compounded by a procedural issue that snared the bill hastily drafted to answer the governor's concerns.

The trouble began when the Assembly assigned the bill an incorrect identification number when sending it to the Senate. The mistake was realized after the Senate had narrowly approved it, but Republicans, in a burst of partisanship, refused to allow the issue to be reconsidered.

That forced lawmakers to undertake the laborious process of redrafting the bill from scratch before they could reapprove it. The other two bills had long been approved, but all three were needed for the new target to take effect.

In the interim, as the crowds of lobbyists inside the Capitol thinned out, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg voiced his his "disappointment" that partisanship had commandeered the session at the 11th hour.

"This is the part that I hate," he said in the hallway outside his office.

Republicans in the Senate, however, were angry with Steinberg, in a spat reminiscent of those that flared up in the heat of the Legislature's budget talks.

They were upset that Steinberg had refused to advance a bill sought by tax-preparation firm Intuit, maker of TurboTax. And to fire back, they held their votes on a series of issues -- including one from Sen. Elaine Alquist, D-Campbell, providing money for swine-flu vaccines -- that required a two-thirds majority.