COLUMBIA -- Beaufort County House members are expressing outrage over the way state senators conducted business the final week of the 2003 legislative session.

"I hope I never see anything like that again," said Rep. JoAnne Gilham, R-Hilton Head. "It was a disgrace."

A filibuster by Sen. John Kuhn, R-Charleston, over a higher education bond bill hamstrung the Senate on Wednesday and Thursday, leaving precious little time to consider about two dozen House bills listed on the Senate's calendar.

Rep. Bill Herbkersman, R-Bluffton, shared his colleague's sentiments.

"I'm disappointed and a little incensed," he said. "The Senate held everything up. That forced JoAnne to make compromises on her bill."

One of the bills on the calendar was Gilham's measure to lower the legal limit for drinking and driving from 0.1 to 0.08. Thanks to deliberate delays by the few senators who opposed the bill, final compromises between the House and Senate versions were ironed out in a frantic rush only moments before the session's mandatory 5 p.m. close Thursday.

"This was the most well-orchestrated chaos I've seen," Gilham said, suggesting that Kuhn's filibuster might have been deliberately planned by lawmakers who wanted to keep certain bills, including the DUI measure, from coming to a floor vote.

In a last-minute meeting between members of the DUI bill conference committee, Gilham managed to fend off Senate measures that would have weakened the bill substantially, said Laura Hudson, a lobbyist representing Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

"She fought down to the wire," Hudson said. "She got that bill over to the Senate in late March, and they dilly dallied around with it until last week."

During the conference committee, Gilham showed resolve, the lobbyist said.

"She didn't sweat, she didn't shake," Hudson said. "She held her ground, all the way up to the last three minutes. I thought the governor was going to have a stroke"

Gov. Mark Sanford participated in the last-minute negotiations to encourage resolution, because failure to pass the law meant the state would lose millions of dollars in federal highway money this fall.

"I've never seen her in action," Hudson said of Gilham. "She's a real heroine."

In spite of the chaos, bills to reform the state's campaign finance and domestic violence laws also were ratified at the last minute on Thursday.

But others, such as a bill to allow a constitutional amendment that would give businesses the right to utilize a free pour method of serving liquor, never came up. The minibottle bill had passed the House on Wednesday and only lacked a simple majority third round vote in the Senate.

Herbkersman said several members of the Charleston delegation apologized for Kuhn's filibuster.

"In the House, we worked as a team and passed between 20 and 25 bills the past few weeks," Herbkersman said. "We put aside our differences in the interest of the public."

Sen. Scott Richardson, R-Hilton Head, said he does not think Kuhn's filibuster was orchestrated..

"What happened is, we created a monster," he said. "People kept going up to him and asking him 'what do you want, what school do you want funding for,' to try to get him to sit down, and I think he thought, 'this is pretty good.'"