It was enough to make House Speaker Greg Curtis almost lose his cool. He spoke a little sternly to the clerks as they scurried to finish an unusual voice vote of the 75-member House and carry bills upstairs to the Senate.

But who could blame him?

House members had just hijacked a bill to lower the state income tax rate - for 45 minutes of debate - putting the Bill of Bills, legislation that ties up all the budget loose ends, at risk. The computerized boards tracking legislation and votes went black. And then the governor asked the Senate to pull back Curtis' pet project - a bill to cut the state's share of the sales tax on food by about 30 percent - as a bargaining chip.

"This is going to be our own version of '24' today and each of us is going to be our own individual version of Jack Bauer," Curtis said early on lawmakers' last day of full-time work.

Except things seem to fall into place for the fictional, anti-terrorism agent on Fox's hit television show. They didn't for many lawmakers and the governor.

The last-minute scramble is tradition; lawmakers seem to feed on the adrenaline. But this year the end was particularly chaotic.

No one expected it to be that way. The 45-day legislative session opened at a brisk clip. Lawmakers quickly debated bills to restrict abortion and limit teaching of evolution. They adopted "base" budgets. Then they started fighting about the rest of the money, how to spend a $1 billion surplus and where to cut taxes. Everything slipped down a gear and stayed in slow-motion for weeks while lawmakers dug in.

That hiatus left much of the business of lawmaking undone until the final day, even the final hours, of the session. With technical problems, lingering tension between the two legislative bodies and a last-minute revolt in the House, the order of making law nearly broke down.

"All of a sudden, the computer crashes. We look at it and say, 'What do we do now?' " said House Majority Leader Jeff Alexander.

House clerks reverted to the low-tech, paper-and-pen vote tally that recorded government action before the era of computers.

The stuffy gallery and halls outside crammed with lobbyists and the public started to smell rank. Lawmakers traipsed through back hallways to avoid being grabbed on their way to the bathroom. House Minority Leader Ralph Becker and Minority Whip Brad King raced up and down the stairs between the houses in an effort to scrape together more money for social services.

Meantime, frustrated senators insisted the House had to vote whether to override Huntsman's veto of the so-called Envirocare bill. Legislative attorneys gave the two houses conflicting legal opinions on the question. Representatives never did take the vote.

In the middle of the frenzy, tax reform faded away.

After having pizza delivered, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and his staff monitored each minute from the other side of Capitol Hill. Every TV in the office was on. As the governor watched his most important initiative go down with the clock, the mood was thoughtful and pragmatic, said Huntsman's spokesman Mike Mower.

The legislation, SB242, had passed the Senate more than a week before. But it sat on the House list of bills for much of the final night. House members complained that lowering the state rate from 7 percent to just under 5 percent, while eliminating write-offs for all but charitable giving and mortgage interest, would hurt retirees, farmers and higher education. Finally, Alexander cut off debate to deal with the budget bill.

The governor and his advisers insist they simply have to educate lawmakers about the benefits of tax reform. "We think we still have the votes," said Mower.

Whether or not lawmakers eventually cut the state's tax rate, the last-minute breakdown revealed a crack in the alliances that developed during the 2006 session.

Early on, the governor and Curtis forged a partnership to prod reluctant senators to remove the sales tax on food. At a sunny press conference a week ago, leaders of the two branches of government touted an agreement to cut $70 million from the sales tax on food, $20 million from taxes charged to businesses and another $70 million from the income tax.

"The cards seemed to fall where the governor and the speaker were more in harmony," Brigham City Republican Sen. Peter Knudson said in an interview on KUER.

Behind the scenes, Curtis says, he told the governor he was only willing to push the fractious House Republican caucus to remove the food tax. On tax reform, the governor was on his own.

"There is only so much you can ask for at any given time," Curtis said the day after the session ended. "I could not put any more pressure on my colleagues to move in a direction they have not been able to get comfortable with and get their arms around. I had to do that with the sales tax on food."

The governor will not say he was stabbed in the back. But he has asked his advisors to analyze what went wrong. His advisers wonder why House leadership waited so long to bring up the complex income-tax bill.

Even Highland Republican Rep. John Dougall, House sponsor of the tax reform bill, feels he was left to dangle.

"Little ol' me was out there by myself and you have half the leadership team battling against it," he said.

But Alexander insists the last-minute debate was not part of a deliberate scheme to sink the legislation. House leaders simply decided early on to deal with bills that had a cost attached, in part to prepare that Bill of Bills to reconcile the budget. Tax reform couldn't come up until that was done.

It didn't help that the bill originated in the Senate. Representatives were only briefed in detail on the bill early Wednesday afternoon. "That wasn't our issue," Alexander said.

Senate President John Valentine acknowledges a "tactical error" when the bill was written. Valentine believes if the sales tax and income tax had been linked in one piece of legislation, House members would not have been able to stall the issue.

Huntsman may have made his own tactical error after that happy press conference to announce the deal. A few days later, he was quoted boasting of his ability to hold back legislation, using the v-word (veto) and suggesting that senators should be subject to term limits. His published comments offended the other members of the Capitol Hill power triad. After capitalizing on the governor's behind-the-scenes-style and new-kid-in-school timidity last year, both Curtis and Valentine say the governor was too aggressive this year.

"There was a backlash," Valentine said. "We almost lost even the reduction on the sales tax on food."

In the end, it may be that House leadership simply outplayed the governor's office and the Senate.

Huntsman is unapologetic for his candid comments. More assertive and available to the press this year, the governor seems unlikely to revert to the bunker.

"I'm just a simple dweeb that is pretty forthright and honest," he said.

For the next two weeks, it's Huntsman's turn. He is focused on reviewing the 395 bills lawmakers adopted during the past seven weeks, deciding which to veto and which to sign. His deadline is March 21.

Tribune reporters Matt Canham, Judy Fahys and Glen Warchol contributed to this story.