It was a frantic end to a contentious legislative session, but South Carolina lawmakers have a list of several major bills they passed into law this year. Among them: a major restructuring of the DMV; lowering the legal limit to determine DUI to .08; and campaign finance reform.

Gov. Mark Sanford signed the DMV restructuring bill into law Thursday afternoon, and immediately named Marcia Adams, the current principal administrator of the DMV, to be the new acting director for the agency. "Will lines be immediately cured at DMV? No," Gov. Sanford said. "But this is a very, very powerful step forward in beginning to change the structure of the way services are delivered over there."

The new law makes the DMV a stand-alone agency accountable to the governor, instead of being a division of the Department of Public Safety. It also lengthens the renewal period of your drivers license to ten years instead of five. That means fewer trips to the DMV and therefore shorter lines. And the law also allows the agency to enter into agreements with private companies to provide services, such as driver testing or tag renewals.

The stricter drunken driving bill lowers the legal blood alcohol level from .10 to .08. The federal government will start withholding federal highway money from states that don’t have the lower limit by this fall, and South Carolina stood to lose millions of dollars.

The Domestic Violence Prevention Act of 2003 has been in the works for years. It increases penalties for criminal domestic violence of a high and aggravated nature, and includes incentives for abusers to get extensive counseling to break the cycle of violence.

Lawmakers also passed into law this year the Predatory Lending Act to protect consumers from unscrupulous lenders and mortgage brokers. And it passed a securities fraud law, giving new powers to the State Grand Jury to investigate stock fraud cases and giving more resources to the state attorney general’s office and State Law Enforcement Division to monitor, investigate and prosecute brokers and companies.

The most contentious bill of the year was the state budget. "I’ve never seen anything like this," says Sen. John Drummond, D-Ninety Six, who’s been at the Statehouse for 39 years. The state found itself with a shortfall of hundreds of millions of dollars. Lawmakers proposed raising the cigarette tax to pay for Medicaid health car needs, but that was defeated. Other tax increases were also shot down, so lawmakers passed a budget with major cuts to state services.

Republicans crafted a plan to pay for Medicaid needs and make up for some of the education cuts by using one-time federal money. But Democrats criticize the plan because the money won’t be there next year, while the state’s needs will be. "You think this year’s tough?" says Sen. Drummond. "Unless something happens, next year…I don’t know how we’re going to get through it unless we make some major changes."