For state Rep. JoAnne Gilham, the legislative session that ended in June was tainted with political games that marked two of her most hard-fought bills.

Those games left her disappointed in respected Senate leaders from both parties, the Hilton Head Island Republican told members of the First Monday Republican Lunch Group of Hilton Head.

Gilham walked club members though the politics of a bill she sponsored that lowers the blood alcohol threshold for drunken driving from 0.10 to 0.08. The legislation, which goes into effect Aug. 19, also applies to boating.

Passing the bill this year -- literally at the last minute -- saved the state from losing nearly $64 million over the next four years in federal transportation money, she said.

But that federal mandate was a sticking point from the start for many legislators who did not want to take orders from the federal government.

The House passed the bill and sent it to the Senate in late March, Gilham said. One senator told her not to expect it back in time to pass this year.

Senate leaders moved the bill through their chambers in early June and agreed to meet in a conference committee on the last day of the session to resolve differences.

But before the committee reached an agreement, another legislator slapped on an 11th-hour amendment that increased fines collected for violations of the workers' compensation law.

Gilham called it a "negative" amendment meant to take support from the original bill. A Senate leader told her, "If you want your money, you'll put your name on this piece of paper," despite the amendment, she said.

She signed the bill, and said she will work next year on amending some of the flaws and loopholes added to her original version.

Gilham said she played the game of politics herself to speed up passage of the Division of Motor Vehicles reform bill, which she also co-sponsored. She attached it to a bill sent to the House from the Senate that would authorize a new special license plate.

It passed in three days.

"I did something that I never thought I'd see myself doing," Gilham said. "... We probably would not have gotten that bill through if it hadn't been for that. And that's wrong."