CARSON CITY — Although Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio said on the floor that his optimism about the Legislature adjourning on time tomorrow wanes with the passing of the hours, we think we see progress. (Then again, Raggio knows more than we do. A lot more.)

But we can report that the Senate passed the transportation funding plan, Assembly Bill 595, but not before a few senators traded witty barbs. State Sen. Bob Coffin was in rare and outraged form, and his mood showed in remarks that usually aren’t heard on the floor of the collegial upper house.

Although state Sen. Mike Schneider pointed out what we’ve been saying all along — “Santa Claus didn’t arrive yesterday. There’s no new money. We’re just moving money around.” — he did said he’d vote for the bill.

Coffin was not so complimentary. In fact, he said he couldn’t complement anyone associated with the bill, and danced up to the line of calling his colleagues a bunch of total pussies. Of course, we’re paraphrasing. Let’s take a look at what Coffin actually said.

“I can’t find anything good, frankly, to say about this,” he said. The Legislature is an equal branch of government, “yet you chicken out when the governor says, ‘I’m not going to support taxes.’”

The trucking industry, Coffin said, didn’t contribute to the transportation solution. “We allowed an industry to completely escape,” he said. Instead, lawmakers “…cobbled together this miserable excuse of a bill to steal money from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, car rental companies…” and local governments.

“All 21 of us sit here in the same position under the constitution as the governor,” Coffin said. (This, we must say, is wrong: While the Legislature is an equal branch of government with the executive, the executive under the constitution is the chief magistrate of the state in whom is vested executive power. Individual senators don’t have those powers, as Coffin well should know. Yes, they lust for them. Daily. But they don’t have them.)

“We’re all going to leave here with the thought of how we’re going to do better next time. Well, I don’t think this [Republican] majority is going to do better next time,” he said. (After all, they just voted against an amendment that would have only asked the voters if they wanted to raise the diesel fuel tax.)

“The powerful interstate trucking companies,” Coffin said, working to the apex of his j’accuse, “how they could snooker you, I don’t know.”

(Hmmm. It’s a pity that Coffin’s own tax-the-truckers bill died in the Senate Taxation Committee. Oh, wait. He didn’t introduce one, did he?)

And finally, this: Coffin praised Gov. Jim Gibbons for his service in the Air Force, and called him brave. “Well, guess what? He’s still winning. He’s still braver than you.” (We’re not so sure that it was bravery that did it, but the governor did have the upper hand: Lawmakers needed to do something about roads, and he could hold a tax veto over their heads to force them to give him a bill that met his standards.)

With a final curse at the “half-baked excuse” for an “indefensible bill,” Coffin sat down.

And state Sen. Bob Beers stood up, with the classic Beersian open. “Thank you, Mr. President. I will be brief.”

Beers pulled a favorite statistic out, reminding his fellow senators that Nevada is No. 2 in the nation when it comes to per capita tax hikes this decade. (C’mon, Nevada! We’ve got three years left, and only one legislative session! We can still top the list!)

Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Dennis Nolan admitted the bill doesn’t fund the entire list of state projects awaiting money, but said the Legislature would be back in 2009 to craft a more long-term solution. In the meantime, critical projects will be funded by AB 595 and the $1.8 billion in funding it will raise.

“This is just the beginning. It will go on and on and on, unfortunately,” Nolan said. (He was talking about the debate over transportation funding, not Coffin’s speech.)

With that, state Sen. Dean Rhodes mercifully called for the vote, over the objections of some Democrats. It was 18-3 to approve, with state Sens. Coffin, Terry Care and Maggie Carlton voting no.

(A note here: Once again, we’re conflicted. Coffin is right in what he said; this bill is not a long-term solution to the problem at hand. It relies on inadequate and sometimes inappropriate funding sources. It omits road users, like truckers and, yes, the general motoring public. But it’s also probably the best thing that could have come out of the process, such as it is. So while we may agree with Coffin in principle, we think he violates a certain principal political principle: Don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good.)

[Here, some time passed. We’d guess at the duration, but time has no meaning in the legislative dimension, which was too terrible for even Albert Einstein to contemplate. Let’s say 90 minutes of human time. We now resume the narrative.]

According to our friend and colleague Jon Ralston, we left the Senate chambers too quickly. As the Senate was about to adjourn, Majority Leader Bill Raggio mocked the Democrats for their political posturing. (And they were posturing, at least a little, which as you know is something Republicans never, ever do.)

Anyway, Coffin reportedly tried to reply, and Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki (who serves as president of the Senate) moved to cut him off. But Coffin began lecturing the freshman lieutenant governor about the rules of the Senate, at which time Raggio moved to adjourn and Krolicki complied.

“Learn the rules. Learn the goddamn rules,” Coffin reportedly shouted, according to Ralston’s FLASH newsletter.

According to Ralston, state Sen. Barbara Cegavkse — ever the model of propriety — admonished Coffin for swearing in front of his daughter, who was on the Senate floor. Which moves us to paraphrase Malcolm X: You’re not necessarily righteous because of the words you don’t use. Plus, sometimes a bit of profanity is appropriate.

In fact, we think swearing would make legislative procedure a lot more interesting, and floor sessions a lot more compelling. Imagine this scene: “Mr. President, under order of business 16, remarks from the floor: Go fuck yourself!” See what we mean?

Anyway, to sum up for the day, the Assembly concurred with the Senate’s amendment to AB 595 on a voice vote, which means the bill goes to the governor, where it will be signed. (We know because just minutes after the vote was taken, the governor’s staff e-mailed a news release praising the bill, and once again quoting Gibbons falsely claiming that the bill represents growth paying for growth, which it clearly doesn’t.)

And now, it’s time for us at Various Things & Stuff to locate an open bar in Carson City on a Sunday night. Wish us luck!