AUGUSTA – If the Legislature approved every bill this session, Maine’s kindergartners would speak French, the circus would have no elephants, toilets would be taxed and cigarette butts would be worth money.

Alas, that is not the case.

The bill to put a 5-cent deposit on cigarette butts is gone, for all intents and purposes. French-speaking kindergartners? Not this year. The elephant bill was killed in the Senate. And the so-called “toilet tax” was soundly defeated.

As the Legislature enters its final stretch, lawmakers have eliminated much of the flotsam and jetsam to focus their attention this week on weightier issues such as mercury, health insurance and the state budget.

But even though many of them are gone, this year’s crop of offbeat bills will not be soon forgotten.

“There have been some funny ones, haven’t there?” said Ruth Joseph, a former legislator. “These strange bills come up every year.”

This year, some of the more unusual bills would have made adultery a crime; exempted clothing from sales tax but only during a two-week period in August; permitted funeral vehicles to use flashing purple lights; and banned the use of elephants from circuses that visit the state.

Sen. John Martin, a State House veteran, said such bills often are sponsored by sincere but inexperienced lawmakers.

“I think it’s a matter of believing that every bill a constituent wants should get introduced,” said Martin, D-Eagle Lake. “Rather than them saying no to the constituent, they give it to the Legislature.”

Rep. Stavros Mendros, R-Lewiston, who sponsored the bill to teach French to kindergartners, believes just the opposite. He contends seasoned lawmakers too often reject creative proposals simply because they’re unorthodox.

“They blame every bad bill on freshman lawmakers, but in reality, the longer someone’s around, the more likely they’ll be able to get support for some harebrained scheme and get it into law,” Mendros said.

Though they may be entertaining on first blush, many proposals are not as goofy as they may sound to outsiders.

For example, the purple lights for funeral vehicles were proposed to make other drivers more aware of a slow-moving procession. In the end, lawmakers amended that bill to switch the color to the traditional yellow used by service vehicles and gave it their stamp of approval.

Likewise, Rep. Susan Kasprzak, D-Newport, said making adultery a crime had its practical applications. “I’ve had e-mails from people who have said that if adultery were a crime, they might have actually thought about it before they did it,” she said. “It could be a real deterrent.”

A watered-down version of the bill that removes the provisions making criminals out of cheaters still is alive.

Many unorthodox proposals do stem from constituents, but a good lawmaker is one who listens to the people he represents and takes action on their behalf, said Rep. Joe Brooks, sponsor of the infamous “Butt Bill.”

Brooks’ anti-litter proposal would have created the nation’s first deposits on cigarette butts, allowing people to redeem butts for a nickel each in the same way soda and beer cans are redeemed in Maine.

The Winterport Democrat suddenly found himself the “butt” of jokes and the subject of editorial cartoons nationwide. But he stuck to his guns.

The bill was overwhelmingly defeated by the Maine House, but served its purpose: it made lawmakers aware that approximately a million nonbiodegradable filters end up on the ground every year in Maine.

“Someone said to me, ‘Joseph, that is the stupidest thing I ever heard,”‘ Brooks said. “Well, it got their attention, didn’t it?”