AUGUSTA – After an afternoon-long meeting Wednesday, legislative leaders agreed to add about 100 new bills to the workload of the second regular session of the Legislature when it reconvenes Jan. 7.

Regardless of the outcome of the Nov. 4 vote on property tax relief, House Speaker Patrick Colwell, D-Gardiner, predicted the issue will dominate the second session, partially due to a bill he is co-sponsoring with Senate President Beverly Daggett, D-Augusta. Both legislative leaders want to increase the Homestead Exemption for property owners from the first $7,000 of valuation to $14,000. More importantly, the lawmakers want to forward the checks directly to homeowners and abandon the current practice of sending the money to municipalities. The Legislature’s price tag for this piece of property tax relief would be about $30 million, according to Colwell.

“It’s a way we can reward Maine people for living in Maine and improving their homes,” Colwell said. “We really wanted to act on this this year, but under the law it would have been construed as a competing measure [to the Maine Municipal Association’s referendum Question 1A]. So we had to wait.”

Although members of the Legislative Council – the administrative body of the Legislature – rejected nearly 250 requests for new bills, lawmakers whose measures failed will have an opportunity to appeal for reconsideration on Nov. 17 when a final determination on bills will be made.

Legislative leaders conceded that a few more bills always seem to slip through regardless of their best efforts to limit the amount of new legislation for the second session, which is scheduled to end two months sooner than the first regular session.

“It is our fondest hope that we adjourn by the first week in April,” Colwell said. “The last thing we need is 500 or 600 bills going into this next session.”

Hope springs eternal at the Legislature’s revisor of statutes office where chief revisor Meg Matheson and her staff were working late to classify 164 bills carried over from this year’s legislative session, another 69 submitted by various state agencies since the Legislature adjourned, and the approximately 100 new bills admitted by the council Wednesday. Depending on how many pieces of legislation Gov. John E. Baldacci submits and what rejected bills are allowed in on appeal on Nov. 17, the second session could easily be dealing with about 400 bills next year.

Many of the bills considered Wednesday by the Legislative Council were presented in title only since details associated with the legislation have yet to be developed. Still, the revisor’s office was able to offer a brief commentary on nearly all of the pieces of admitted legislation which include:

. a bill sponsored by Senate President Beverly Daggett, D-Augusta, requiring sex offenders with multiple domiciles to register all of their addresses with police instead of just one;

. a bill to allow a portrait of former U.S. Sen. George J. Mitchell to hang in the State House, also sponsored by Daggett;

. a bill that beefs up penalties for night hunting, doubling fines and mandating forfeiture of all equipment, sponsored by Rep. Matt Dunlap, D-Old Town;

. a bill renaming the state’s Vocational Technical Education Schools, the Career and Technical Education Schools, sponsored by Rep. Mary Ellen Ledwin, R-Holden;

. a bill prohibiting female genital mutilation, sponsored by Rep. Deborah Simpson, D-Auburn;

. a bill repealing the smoking ban in beano halls enacted this year, sponsored by Sen. Ken Gagnon, D-Waterville; and,

. a bill authorizing the town of Verona to change its name to Verona Island, sponsored by Sen. Edward Youngblood, R-Brewer.

Among the many proposals that didn’t make it past the council were:

. a bill allowing vanity plates for low-speed vehicles that can attain a speed of 20 mph, but less than 25 mph, sponsored by Sen. Tom Sawyer, Bangor;

. a bill to reduce aggressive driving and road rage, also sponsored by Sawyer;

. a bill to lower the cigarette tax, sponsored by Rep. Lois Snowe-Mello, R-Poland; and,

. a bill to establish a commercial license plate featuring a lobster on the plate, sponsored by Rep. Joanne Twomey, D-Biddeford.

Officials with the revisor of statutes office hope to have an updated list of accepted bills by title only available for public viewing within the next week at the state’s Web site: http://janus.state.me.us/legis/lio/cloture121r2/homepage.htm