Gov. Mark Sanford hailed Tuesday as "the Senate's day" after the passage of critical rules changes. It also was "the people's day" since there now is a far better chance that the public's business will get done in this legislative session.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Hugh Leatherman predicted Tuesday's outcome last week during a media workshop, saying that he heard during the recent campaign how much the voters were fed up with the Senate gridlock of recent years. The senator said then that the public understands very well that the Senate "is not tending to the public's business."

The majority of the senators said with their vote that they not only had gotten that message but had become equally frustrated with the way work wasn't getting done. Threats of filibusters and the objections of lone senators were enough to kill critical legislation without anything close to substantive debate.

The rules changes will directly address those problems along with the bad legislative habit of attaching to popular legislation unrelated amendments known as "bobtails" that couldn't pass on their own. The new, much tighter anti-bobtailing rule clearly bans any amendment that raises any "new and independent matter."

While opponents have argued that the rules changes will make the Senate less deliberative in its work, the misuse of the old rules resulted in very little deliberation actually taking place. As several Senate leaders noted last week, filibusters were threatened on bills almost from the outset, before debate or amendments could be considered. Since the old rules stipulated that a minimum of 28 of the 46 senators had to agree to stop a filibuster, the threat alone was often enough to result in adjournment.

The new rules should help cure that since a filibuster now can be stopped either by 26 senators or by three-fifths of those present and voting, whichever is the lesser. No longer can senators keep a filibuster going either by their absence or by failing to vote.

The new rules also preclude extended debate until after the senators have at least had a chance to consider amendments during second reading.

The most critical revision dealt with what once seemed a good idea but which had gone very bad. The practice of allowing just one senator to put a bill on the contested calendar was intended to allow that senator to satisfy his concerns about a piece of legislation.

It was never intended to allow one senator to single-handedly stop legislation indefinitely. But that has been the result in recent years, primarily because the Senate has become so contentious and the contested calendar so long. The new rule would give a senator what amounts to two weeks to satisfy his concerns about a bill. After that, it would be subject to the consideration of the full body.

Rules Committee Chairman Larry Martin hailed the changes as giving the Senate "the ability to finally make some substantive headway and debate major pieces of legislation."

Had the Senate not done its good work on the rules Tuesday, there would have been little reason to hope that this year would have been any better than last for such reforms as government restructuring and changes in tort law. Now, at least, there is reason for optimism.