RICHMOND - The General Assembly gets one more shot today at two thorny issues lawmakers confronted during their winter legislative session - the state budget and complex legislation that would ease bureaucratic oversight of public colleges.

Those measures arguably are the most far-reaching items lawmakers will consider when they return to the Capitol for a one-day session to consider legislation that Gov. Mark Warner vetoed or amended.

Republican senators also may use the session to revisit their battle with colleague Russell Potts of Winchester, who announced in February that he would bypass the GOP nominating process and run for governor as an independent. Potts rejected his colleagues' request to resign from the GOP caucus. It appears unlikely that his opponents could get enough support in the full Senate to strip him of his committee assignments if a resolution were allowed to come up for a vote.

The substance of today's session should be less contentious. Warner, in his final year in office, vetoed just one bill - a measure urging Congress to lift a federal ban on natural gas exploration off Virginia's coast. The Republican-controlled legislature would have to muster two-thirds majorities in both houses to override the Democratic governor's veto.

Warner amended 45 other bills, including the revised two-year budget and a voluminous measure that could give state colleges greater control over their administration and finances.

The governor offered 30 amendments to the budget, proposing an additional $19.1 million in spending to the $63 billion plan lawmakers sent to his desk in February. The revised spending plan incorporates an additional $1.2 billion in general-fund revenue that lawmakers had not anticipated last year when they passed the original budget. The current budget cycle ends June 30, 2006.

Among other things, Warner hopes to salvage part of a proposed $21 million package of economic development programs for rural and distressed areas. Lawmakers approved only $6.6 million and rejected some elements of Warner's plan, which was targeted largely at Southwest and Southside Virginia. Warner wants lawmakers to add another $5.1 million to boost tourism, support regional work-force training programs and assist localities in acquiring and developing abandoned industrial sites.

Sen. Charles Hawkins, R-Chatham, said lawmakers should grant the governor's request.

"As long as we can satisfy the bottom line, I don't think anyone should question it," Hawkins said. "We need to make sure there's a fundamental understanding that we've got some economic problems in rural Virginia."

Warner also wants lawmakers to add $3 million to the budget to boost the pay of experienced state police officers and sheriff's deputies. He also called for additional spending on nonprofit museums throughout the state, including $180,000 for Roanoke's Art Museum of Western Virginia and $50,000 for the Harrison Museum of African American Culture.

The budget is the only bill that consumes more paper than the 85-page measure stipulating how public colleges can gain operating freedom from the state bureaucracy. Every college will have a chance to take more control of such areas as procurement and building projects. Larger, more complex institutions such as Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia could negotiate for greater freedom.

Colleges will be required to sign agreements with the state that contain detailed six-year plans covering enrollment growth, tuition rates and blueprints for meeting 11 specific state goals. Warner's administration effectively rewrote the legislation, but the revised measure does not change the fundamental purpose of the original bill. But some lawmakers said the complex measure requires careful monitoring as colleges begin entering into operating agreements this year.

"This is a spoonful to swallow at one time," said Senate Finance Committee Chairman John Chichester, R-Stafford County, after receiving a briefing on the legislation Tuesday morning.

Chichester said he would ask three senators to become "resident experts" on the legislation as the agreements between the schools and the state take shape.