Not long before the General Assembly adjourned the 2009 session, the folks at the Pope Civitas Institute added a new post to their blog proclaiming that "NCGA gets soft on crime," completely distorting legislation passed in the last few days that would make minor adjustments to state sentencing laws.

The Civistasers neglected to mention not only that the changes would save millions of dollars in reduced prison costs, but that they were supported by Sheriffs, prosecutors, and the Sentencing Commission—a panel of judges, lawyers and law enforcement officers.

It's fitting that the 2009 session ended with another distortion from the folks whose critique of legislative actions reads more like partisan 30-second campaign attack ads than thoughtful policy discussions. 

That's the way this strange session began, with the demagogues desperately trying to portray the worst state budget crisis in 60 years as merely a spending problem that could be solved by simply cutting waste out of state government.

Senate leaders didn't effectively address those claims head on, instead putting a budget together largely in secret that denied the public a chance to understand what was at stake in their decisions about taxes and budget reductions.

The Senate passed its budget before the April revenue figures forced economic forecasters to lower revenue projections significantly, making the Senate budget and the one proposed by Governor Beverly Perdue virtually irrelevant as the House began to put its spending plan together.

While the Senate budget philosophy was to put its collective heads in the sand and ignore the likelihood of a much larger shortfall, House leaders turned their budget process into a game of chicken, pushing ahead as if there would be no tax increase and the shortfall would be addressed with cuts only, resulting in devastating reductions to education, human services, and criminal justice.

The expected outrage from the advocacy community called the House leaders' bluff and the final House budget raised almost $800 million in new revenue, an amount that rose to almost a billion dollars in final negotiations with the Senate.

The severe economic crisis and sagging state revenues were just two of the factors beyond lawmakers' control that colored this legislative session. The national debate over the federal stimulus package dominated the news for several weeks early in the session with the same interests opposing it who oppose virtually everything that government does.

The stimulus package that the demagogues opposed gave almost everyone in North Carolina a tax cut, increased support for people receiving food stamps and unemployment benefits, and provided hundreds of millions of dollars for public investments in highway projects, weatherization and green jobs to stimulate the economy.

It also provided $1.3 billion in education and human services funding to help lawmakers balance the budget.

The other major news that dominated the headlines had little to do with the budget debate or other legislative battles, but overshadowed much of the General Assembly's proceedings. The investigation into the shenanigans of former Governor Mike Easley and the controversy surrounding his wife Mary's lucrative position at N.C  State diverted the attention of many in Raleigh.

Just as the budget negotiations between the House and Senate began in earnest, the national health care debate exploded in the state with a visit to Raleigh by President Obama, a bus tour by opponents of meaningful reform, and spirited forums held by both sides.

It added another unusual filter to an already atypical General Assembly session, that for all the budget talk, also resulted in long overdue legislation to ban smoking in restaurants in restaurants and bars, protect kids from bullying at school, expand the state's woefully narrow sex education program, address the role of race in application of the death penalty, and give local governments a mechanism to fund mass transit.

Not a bad start to a list of accomplishments for a General Assembly that began six months ago in the shadow of the massive budget shortfall. There's plenty lawmakers didn't do too and plenty they did that are troubling—expanding business incentives comes to mind.

Much of the legislative process is still too closed and too dominated by a few power brokers, particularly in the Senate. But overall, the legislative session that quietly drew to a close Tuesday afternoon wasn't a bad effort in especially trying times—no matter what the headlines say on the right-wing blogs.