While the previous session focused on raising taxes to cover losses state coffers incurred following Sept. 11, 2001, this session eased some of those expenses for businesses and resulted in a motor vehicle rebate championed by Gov. Kenny Guinn.

That rebate, which will range from $75 to $275 per registered vehicle, will also apply to businesses. That's particularly good news for companies such as Sprint. The major Las Vegas-area telephone service provider has nearly 800 vans and trucks that will likely be covered by the rebate.

"It's nice to recover some of those registration costs," said Sprint spokeswoman Vicki Soares, who added that the payment would go back to future registration and maintenance costs for the company fleet.

Early on in the session, the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce had mixed reactions to the outcome of the highly publicized property tax battle. While it hailed the Legislature's move to cap property tax increases for businesses at 8 percent, there was frustration over the split roll created by giving all owner-occupied property a 3 percent cap.

By session's end, however, the chamber was more positive about the subsequent battles.

"Overall the session ended better than it started," said Christina Dugan, government affairs director for the chamber.

Dugan was particularly pleased with a successful effort to turn back proposals to raise the state's minimum wage.

"We were able to forestall the minimum wage increase, at least until we have a chance to educate voters," she said.

Now voters in November 2006 will decide on a proposed constitutional amendment to raise the minimum wage by $1 and also give employees in private business a cost of living increase every year up to $3. Voters in 2004 overwhelmingly approved the proposal.

The chamber also hailed the passage of a bill designed to give the smallest Southern Nevada businesses the opportunity to provide health insurance coverage to their employees. That bill will use surplus federal funds that the state received to create Nevada Check Up to subsidize insurance plans for businesses with between two and 50 employees.

Dugan also said the chamber was supportive of the governor's rebate, and happy with the reduction of the payroll tax rate from 0.65 percent to 0.63 percent.

That reduction, however, was a further irritation to Nevada bankers.

While they were successful in getting relief on the 2003 Legislature's per-branch tax of $7,000 a year, they had been fighting the have their payroll tax of 2 percent reduced to the level other businesses are paying.

"We are truly paying in excess of three times what other businesses are paying," said Bill Uffelman, chief executive of the Nevada Bankers Association. "This (decrease for other businesses) just increases that unfair disparity."

The per-branch excise fee was waived for one branch, per bank, per county, giving relief to rural branches that often operate on narrow margins, Uffelman said. He said easing the branch tax is expected to affect about 75 branches at a cost to the state coffers of about $500,000 out of the roughly $3 million annually that the 2003 measure was generating.

Uffelman said the effort to get equality in the payroll tax during the next Legislature has already begun.

"The 2007 session campaign -- let's see, the session was out about 12:30 -- it began about 12:45," Uffleman said.

Overall, Nevada Development Authority Chief Executive Somer Hollingsworth said the session was an improvement over the heated 2003 Legislature, which featured extensive debates over business taxes. He said the return to normalcy is a positive sign for businesses looking to expand or relocate into Nevada.

"It wasn't a repeat of 2003," Hollingsworth said of the recent session. "It's a solid, dependable situation now."

The session also brought $10 million over the next two years for marketing Nevada's economic development strengths. The NDA will get about $6.5 million of that, Hollingsworth said.

Officials with Sierra Pacific Resources -- parent company of Nevada Power Co. of Las Vegas and Sierra Pacific Power Co. of Reno -- hailed the Legislature's move to incorporate energy efficiency and conservation measures into the 2001 law requiring the utilities to increase the percentage of renewable resources used to serve customer load. The new legislation will give the electric companies credit for company-sponsored programs.

"We are firm believers that conservation and energy efficiency are extremely important to our customers," said Michael Yackira, chief financial officer for Sierra Pacific Resources. "Additionally, energy efficiency and renewables are very similar in their end result ... which is lowering the use of fossil fuels."

Also passed by the legislature was a bill that staggered the filing of general rate cases for Sierra Pacific Power and Nevada Power. While both utilities will still be required to file every two years the massive general rate cases -- which cover the cost of administration, building and maintaining power plants and transmission lines as well as setting return for shareholder -- they will be staggered, giving the company and the Public Utilities Commission more time to examine the cases thoroughly.

The Legislature also enacted a law requiring natural gas companies like Southwest Gas Corp. of Las Vegas to make quarterly filings to set rates based on the fluctuating cost of natural gas. The measure was designed to give more realistic pricing signals to customers in order to allow for appropriate conservation efforts and cut down carrying costs for large unrecovered balances that have built up in recent years when natural gas costs have spiked.