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RALEIGH – When lawmakers agreed to stop their session until mid-July, the vote was 108-1. Greensboro Rep. John Blust was the lone “no” vote.

“I don’t think we should have gone home without capping the gas tax,” Blust said as lawmakers filtered out of the chamber. “In two weeks, when that thing hits, there’s going to be an outcry.”

Lawmakers capped a five-month regular legislative session with a sprint to the finish that pushed through an ambitious agenda, including sweeping changes to the tax code, tweaks to environmental bills, regulations meant to keep businesses from hiring illegal immigrants and a bill intended to pave the way for offshore drilling.

That’s not to say everything Republicans set their sights on has been accomplished.

An effort to rewrite the law that allows defendants facing the death penalty to challenge their convictions based on statistical evidence ran out of time.

And Blust argued that even as the GOP left town praising a budget that allows $1.5 billion in annual sales and income taxes to expire, it overlooked a tax increase that will irritate consumers.

The tax that drivers pay at the gas pump floats as a percentage of the wholesale price of gasoline. It will go up 2.5 cents to 35 cents a gallon, effective July 1.

Earlier this decade, the gas tax was temporarily capped to keep it from rising at a time when the economy faced high unemployment and rising fuel and food prices.

Blust said lawmakers should do that again.

“It’s something we have to deal with,” House Speaker Thom Tillis said.

The matter is complicated because the floating gas tax was meant to account for swings in the price of materials used to build roads. Capping the tax would mean less money for road repairs.

Lawmakers are already scheduled to return to Raleigh on July 13 to redraw legislative districts, consider whether to override any bills the governor might veto and deal with election laws.

Gov. Bev Perdue vetoed her seventh bill of the session as lawmakers left town Saturday. She rejected a measure that would keep school districts from remitting automatic payments to the N.C. Association of Educators, which functions as a teachers’ union.

“This bill is nothing but a petty and vindictive attempt to seek retribution against a group that opposed the Republican budget,” Perdue said in a news release Saturday.

Organizations that are representing other state employees would have been allowed to continue their check-off funding.

Other bills that Perdue staffers say she is considering sending back include measures that would:

• Require voters to show photo identification at the poll.

Proponents say it makes sense to make people prove who they are. Opponents say the measure is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist and will curb voting by the elderly and some minorities.

• Place waiting periods and other regulations on women seeking abortions and the doctors who provide them. Women would be required to receive an ultrasound before a pregnancy is terminated.

Backers say women often don’t receive enough information before they have an abortion, while opponents say they are trying to prevent women from accessing a legal medical procedure.

• Rewrite the state’s medical malpractice laws. The laws cap damage awards and give drug makers some protection from lawsuits if their products get federal approval.

Lawmakers need a three-fifths majority in both the House and Senate to override a veto. In the House, that requires that at least four Democrats vote with Republicans, which is not a sure thing on any of these bills.

In addition to the July redistricting session, lawmakers plan to come back in August or September to sort through a slate of possible constitutional amendments. Until then, they’ll be talking to voters about their accomplishments.

Tillis and Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger, an Eden Republican, both cited a change to how businesses with operations in several states pay taxes as one of the most significant accomplishments of the session.

The law would, among other things, allow large corporations to charge their business units for using the company’s trademarks.

Critics say that could lead to a situation in which a company charges its North Carolina subsidiary enough for its intellectual property that its corporate tax liability in the state is partially or completely eliminated.

“Corporate tax dodgers cost North Carolina’s vital public investments millions of dollars that could be invested in our state’s future,” said Edwin McLenaghan, a policy analyst with the liberal-leaning N.C. Budget & Tax Center.

Berger said the new rules will provide businesses with a certainty about their accounting practices rather than forcing them to rely on a series of ad hoc decisions.

“In terms of job creation, job development, business climate for North Carolina was a very significant thing,” Berger said.

Many important changes to law passed as part of technical-corrections measures, long bills that combine dozens of last-minute fixes to mistakes made earlier in the session as well as some substantial tweaks sought by special interests.

For example, an environmental technical-corrections measure will allow Greensboro to delay completing upgrades to its water and sewer treatment plants two years past a 2016 deadline as long as work begins before 2016.

The same bill included a last-minute addition by Sen. Don Vaughan, a Greensboro Democrat, that repeals a 2007 law requiring hazardous-waste facilities to post extra financial assurances that they have the ability to clean up after themselves in case of an accident.

“Hazardous-waste facilities are something we’ve had a hard time with in North Carolina,” House Minority Leader Joe Hackney said. “To roll back the financial assurance requirements is not something we want to be a part of.”

The change passed the House 64-39 and was unanimous in the Senate.

“The state law is over-broad,” Vaughan said, adding that 49 other states rely on the federal law to protect residents from hazardous-waste spills. “This was costly to consumer and companies.”

Other bills that passed in the closing hours of session make it harder for cities to annex property into their corporate limits without the cooperation of owners and require employers with 25 or more employees to check with the federal e-verify system that someone is legal to work in this county.

That measure was far weaker than advocates had wanted because it removed criminal penalties and exempted many temporary workers.

A pair of measures that saw some changes in the closing hours of the session would set North Carolina on a path toward exploiting natural gas reserves both onshore and off.

Provisions governing so-called fracking, which shoots chemical-treated water into the ground to push natural gas to the surface, are much more cautious. The bill also turns the state’s energy policy council into an Energy Jobs Council, focused on facilitating offshore drilling. This change upsets environmental advocates, who say the dangers of drilling are not properly taken into account and that the bills ignore renewable energy efforts, such as solar power.

“It leaves out the job-growth sector, which is clean energy, and promotes drilling offshore, which I don’t think is going to do the kind of job creation the state needs,” said Rep. Pricey Harrison, a Greensboro Democrat.

Contact Mark Binker at (919) 832-5549 or mark.binker@news-record.com