SANTA FE — Gov. Bill Richardson says lawmakers did great work in the legislative session that ended Saturday - just not enough of it.

The governor said while it was the most productive session in state history, "we still have business to finish."

He said he will call the Legislature back into a special session beginning Tuesday to act on a highway package, ethics measures, crime bills, a domestic partnership proposal, and more.

"We're on a roll, so let's continue that roll," Richardson told a room full of bleary-eyed legislative leaders and cabinet secretaries just after the 60-day session ended, by law, at noon.

Richardson is riding herd on lawmakers as he eyes the White House; he's running for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

"I have done here in New Mexico ... what I can do as president ... make a difference in the lives of the American people," Richardson said.

Richardson laid out a broad agenda for the session, and the Legislature went along with most of it.

Lawmakers voted to raise the hourly minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.50 by January 2009, while Washington is "mired in partisanship and gridlock," said the governor, sounding a campaign theme.

The Legislature approved a $5.6 billion state budget, $700 million in capital projects, medical marijuana legalization, a statewide smoking ban, surface owners protection from oil and gas drilling, payday lending restrictions, a lottery scholarship funding fix, a cockfighting ban, and an ethics measure limiting gifts to state officials.

Also endorsed: more than $80 million in tax cuts for businesses and individuals. They include tax breaks targeted to health care providers, renewable energy projects and economic development initiatives.

And lawmakers yielded to the governor's push to approve new state-tribal gambling compacts - good until 2037 - that are expected to be signed by at least 10 New Mexico tribes with casinos.

A last-minute compromise saved a measure to provide much stronger oversight of the state's problem-plagued regional housing authorities.

While they won't be dismantled, as the administration first proposed, they'll lose their bonding authority and undergo close scrutiny from the Mortgage Finance Authority and the Department of Finance and Administration.

Several of the governor's proposals, however, died when the session ended - chief among them a $200 million-plus funding package for local and tribal road projects.

The legislation is dubbed GRIP 2, for Governor Richardson's Investment Partnership. The first GRIP was a $1.6 billion highway and transportation package enacted in 2003.

GRIP 2 had passed the House and was on the Senate's agenda, but opponents thwarted discussion of it Saturday.

House Speaker Ben Lujan, a Nambe Democrat, complained that he thought there was an understanding the Senate would pass the bill.

"We felt comfortable that GRIP 2 would get done," said Lujan, who stressed its importance to local communities.

But some lawmakers are reluctant to start another road program when rising construction costs means there's already a shortfall and delays in GRIP 1.

"If we haven't fixed GRIP 1, why should we even be looking at GRIP 2," said Senate Finance Co-Chairman John Arthur Smith, a Deming Democrat.

Limits on campaign contributions, the creation of an independent ethics commission and expanded public financing of campaigns also died with the session. They were the recommendations of an ethics task force appointed by the governor after a kickback scandal in the treasurer's office.

The domestic partnership bill - which died in the Senate - would have allowed heterosexual or homosexual couples to register their domestic partnerships with county clerks, securing all the rights of married couples.

"New Mexico families deserve our respect, no matter their race, creed or sexual orientation," he said.

Richardson also wants legislators to pass tougher domestic violence penalties, create registries of convicted drug dealers and meth-impacted properties and create an office of water infrastructure.