Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

The Texas Legislature is a lot like pro basketball. You can see a dazzling play or a spectacular breakdown at any point, but the winners and losers are almost inevitably determined in the closing minutes of the game.

Two weeks remain in the 2007 legislative session. The unresolved questions include how to spend more than $150 billion in public money over two years, how to pay for new highways, which students to automatically admit to top state universities and how to supply water and power to a burgeoning state.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said he is not confident that the House and Senate can settle all of the remaining major issues in the time they have left.

"We've got 100 balls in the air," Dewhurst said.

Heading into 2007, the table appeared set for a relatively smooth session. State revenue had grown by $14 billion over two years, Republicans had retained full control of the Legislature and statewide offices in the fall elections, and lawmakers had met the Texas Supreme Court's demand for a new system to pay for public schools last year.

But then came a late-developing battle for the House speakership to start the session, which was followed by Gov. Rick Perry's order that the state vaccinate schoolgirls to protect them from the human papillomavirus. The anger that lawmakers expressed over the order, which sidestepped the legislative process, was rivaled only by a revolt against his push for toll roads built and operated by private companies.

Then a sexual abuse scandal surfaced at the Texas Youth Commission, and lawmakers clashed with Perry over how to address the problems at the juvenile corrections agency. Almost out of nowhere, three of the largest issues of the session became fixing the Youth Commission, stopping the HPV vaccine order and rehashing the toll road policy.

Lawmakers have blocked Perry's HPV order, and the House and Senate have approved similar proposals to try to prevent further abuse at the Youth Commission. The two chambers have also agreed on a two-year ban on most private toll road contracts, but some of the provisions in that legislation have caused Perry to threaten a veto.

Other major issues aren't so far along.

House and Senate leaders are negotiating a final version of the state's two-year budget — deciding, for example, whether state employees will get a pay raise, who is eligible for state health insurance programs and how much to spend to repair state parks. And although the Senate voted to tweak the law automatically admitting students from the top 10 percent of their high school class to the state universities of their choice, the House has not acted.

Meanwhile, the two chambers have reached an impasse on a Senate proposal to designate future reservoir sites, and negotiations have stalled over legislation trying to control high electric prices.

It's not unusual for haggling over major issues to last until the end of the 140-day session. That may be why House Speaker Tom Craddick did not sound too worried about the pace of things last week.

"Most of the major legislation has moved real well," he said. "Obviously we've got the budget left. That's the biggest item of the session."

Hundreds of proposals filed by hopeful lawmakers as early as November are dead, having missed key legislative deadlines. Those that are still alive need approval in both the House and Senate, at which point conference committees with a few members from each chamber sit down to work out differences.

"Things do move a little more into the backrooms now," said Rep. Mark Strama, D-Austin. "I get the sense that deals are getting cut, trades are being made and I'm sort of not in on it as a second-term member in the minority party."

But once those deals are reached, the resulting legislation still needs approval from a majority of the House and Senate.

Strama said, "As long as members vote their districts and their conscience and don't just vote the way they're expected to by virtue of what party they belong to, then no amount of backroom dealing and no amount of consolidation of power can take away the power of each individual member when they vote on those conference committee reports."

The lawmakers who sit on conference committees are not the only ones whose power is growing in the final days. The guy in the stately white house across the street is also exerting more influence.

Lawmakers have spent more time than usual this year publicly clashing with Perry, whether they were attacking his toll-road policy, thwarting his HPV order or ignoring his call for further property-tax cuts. But now it's largely up to Perry to decide whether the ideas that lawmakers successfully pushed through the House and Senate will find their way into law.

"He's always had the same amount of power; it just comes more into play," said Rep. Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands. "You might get a call from the governor's office saying, 'We need this bill to be a little more this way than the other way.' So there's influence there because in the back of your mind is either a veto or, worse, the threat of a special session, depending on the importance of your bill."

Despite the chaos of the closing days, some lawmakers already see the wheels starting to turn on the 2009 session.

Strama said he senses that lawmakers have turned a corner this year in their willingness to consider new energy ideas. He attributed that to the controversy earlier this year surrounding plans by TXU Corp. to build 11 coal-burning power plants, combined with high energy prices, concerns over political instability in the Middle East and a heightened public awareness of the environmental impact of energy consumption.

"I'm not sure we'll leave this legislative session with all the right policies in place, " Strama said. "But I do think we have turned a corner in terms of the direction we're going to go."