Florida deserves better than the quarreling, stalling, cramming and destroying its lawmakers displayed at the end of the legislative session, but at least it wasn't a total waste.

Tradition suggests saving the best for last, but Florida's Legislature got it backward.

With nearly everything having been saved for last, its final hours were among the worst ever -- disorganized and destructive.

Legislators demolished the Board of Regents, leaving the universities to the uncertain care of individual trustee boards and at the mercy of political meddling. Immediately proving the latter point, they also ordered each of the three state medical schools to admit two military academy graduates annually, regardless of qualifications, endangering their accreditation. That was inspired by a prominent Republican fund-raiser whose son just happens to fit the bill.

They ransacked the judicial nominating commissions, giving the governor all nine appointments on each of the panels. The object, virtually confessed by the Christian Coalition and business lobbies that backed the bill, is to pack the courts with judges friendly to their causes.

They proposed a constitutional amendment to stop the Florida Supreme Court from ever prohibiting the death penalty. Its one immediate effect, if voters approve, would be to permit the execution of 16-year-olds, which the court had barred.

They enacted a new budget lacking in any new state money to public schools but which spares $225-million for tax cuts primarily benefitting stockholders and businesses that contribute to private school scholarships.

They dealt a stunning defeat to local governments and to what's left of Florida's scenic beauty in a transportation bill that requires communities to pay for billboards they want taken down. Pinellas County and some other localities were exempted to win their legislators' votes, but it's now too late for most others. If Gov. Jeb Bush does not veto it, his environmental credentials will be seriously impaired.

Was the session all to waste? Certainly not. The election reform bill, born of last year's presidential debacle, transforms Florida from a laughingstock to a leader. Everyone took that responsibility seriously. The new law bans punch cards, subsidizes counties to buy or lease new voting systems, provides clear and uniform recount standards, and protects in many ways the citizens' rights to cast their votes and have them fairly counted. Sen. Bill Posey, R-Rockledge, and Rep. J. Dudley Goodlette, R-Naples, the elections chairmen, earned the respect of every Floridian. But even this achievement was flawed, at the House's insistence, with a transparently partisan and probably unconstitutional matching-funds restriction that had no purpose in this bill but to help Bush and hurt his Democratic opponent next year.

The Senate, meanwhile, made the best it could of the Career Service controversy; the compromise bill is far less hurtful to state employees -- other than the 16,000 whose jobs are newly exempt -- than the House and the governor had wished.

Despite its posturing over the death penalty, the Legislature did exempt the mentally retarded and provide for DNA testing that could clear people wrongfully convicted of crimes.

At Senate President John McKay's insistence, legislation was passed to aid the homeless and, in pilot projects, to identify and help children with learning disabilities.

Whether by someone's wisdom or someone's neglect, two of the worst anti-Sunshine bills never made it all the way through. One would have sealed doctors' reports of "adverse medical incidents" and the other would have kept secret all but the names of the three finalists for a college or university presidency. Most bad environmental bills died, too.

But overall, it should not be said of a legislative session what was said throughout this one: that it could have been worse. Good nursing home reforms were marred by spiteful restrictions on lawsuits. The Legislature did nothing to make health insurance more affordable and available or to protect Floridians from exploitation by certain out-of-state carriers. It did nothing to improve growth management, or resolve problems in workers' compensation.

Also dead on adjournment, in a Senate committee, was a bill the House had passed almost two months earlier, as one of Speaker Tom Feeney's top priorities, to require secret political committees to disclose where they get their money and how they spend it. If Feeney had devoted half as much effort to passing this as he spent trying to destroy the teacher's union, it would be on the governor's desk now.

Republicans had promised to run the Legislature responsibly, and for several years they did. But this session stalled so much and quarrelled so much that they couldn't agree even when to end it. Florida deserved a better process and did not deserve the devastation this session leaves behind.

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