ONE OF THE first articles I wrote as a legislative reporter, back in 1988, was about an effort by a bizarre coalition of groups ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union to the John Birch Society that said it was trying to save the U.S. Constitution.

At issue was what looked like the impending call for a constitutional convention to pass a balanced-budget amendment. The save-the-Constitution crowd was convinced that this would lead either to anarchy or communism, depending on which end of the spectrum you were talking to, because there was no way to limit the scope of a convention. So it was trying to get the 32 state legislatures that had called for a convention to rescind those calls, before we reached the magic number of 34 states that would force one.

The bill in South Carolina had passed the House and — surprise — was being held up in the Senate, by three senators. There, it would eventually die — as have all similar measures that have been proposed over the years.

Until this year.

This year, on June 2, a new batch of Constitution-defenders finally broke through the 16-year wall of resistance and passed the legislation, removing South Carolina from the list of states that have called for a convention, and moving our nation one step back from the precipice.

It just goes to show that even in an abysmally unproductive session, a session marked by inflexibility and risk-aversion, some lost causes can be won.

In fact, it looked for a time, during the hectic final days of the session, like other perennial proposals would slip suddenly into law, from a bill to strip high school dropouts of their driver’s licenses to a more recent effort to overhaul state health agencies.

While those successes never materialized, the much-maligned 2004 General Assembly did manage to make progress on a few intractable problems. Not many, unfortunately, but a few.

At the top of the list are three important pieces of legislation that passed either early enough or late enough to be lost in the consensus of disgust that began to form in May:

• PSC reform. After a stalemate that spanned three legislative sessions, lawmakers passed a bill that should greatly improve the state’s regulation of power companies, phone companies and other public utilities. The bill, a response to legislative logrolling and far-too-cozy relationships between regulators and the regulated, will end regulators' disturbing practice of meeting secretly with utility representatives, require that those regulators be college graduates with relevant experience, and prohibit legislators’ spouses and dependents from becoming regulators.

• Fiscal Discipline Act. State leaders buried their heads in the sand in 2002 when the state ended the fiscal year with an unconstitutional deficit; they refused in 2003 to pay it off. And up until the final days of this session, it looked as though even a plan to plug the hole completely and prevent such a thing happening again would die in a whimper. But then the Senate relented and passed a bill that sets up a process to finish paying off the deficit, replenish reserve funds and provide the tools — and the mandate — that will force the Budget and Control Board to act immediately if another year-end debt materializes.

• Minibottles. The constitutionally mandated tiny liquor bottles have contributed to our state’s nation-leading highway death rate, by tricking people into drinking more liquor than they expected. The tourism industry says that on top of that, they drive up drink costs, cut into profit margins and make the state look backwards. Finally this fall, voters will have a chance to eliminate the minibottle requirement from the constitution.

Other perennial proposals passed this year are more limited in scope, but still mark surprising advances worth celebrating:

• Social workers and veterinarians will be required to report to animal protection officials if they have reason to believe someone has abandoned or abused an animal; everybody else will be required to report cases in which they have “actual cause,” a higher hurdle, to believe abuse or abandonment occurred.

• Outside agencies will investigate any wrecks that occur during the course of police pursuits. This closes a loophole in the law that some police agencies said only required an outside review if a police vehicle physically crashed. The law also makes it clear that the investigations must identify possible witnesses who weren’t involved but might have seen what led up to the crash. (OK: This one doesn’t really fit the category, since we only recently learned this was a problem, but it’s an excellent law that needed to be mentioned somewhere.)

• People involved in traffic accidents that don’t involve injuries will have to move their vehicles out of the way of traffic immediately, rather than waiting until police arrive.

• Drivers who cancel their auto insurance will have their driver’s license suspended. The state already suspends the license plate of the uninsured car. While the law is too often not enforced, the new provision should help by dramatically increasing the penalty for anyone who gets caught. And that can’t help but reduce our abnormally high rate of uninsured drivers.

Ms. Scoppe can be reached at cscoppe@thestate.com or at (803) 771-8571.