CARSON CITY -- Lawmakers gave final approval Tuesday to a proposed constitutional amendment that would let lawmakers convene special sessions on their own, without having to get the governor to do so.

AJR5 must still win approval from the 2011 Legislature, and then go to a public vote in 2012. It moved ahead on Tuesday as Assembly members agreed to Senate changes to the proposal.

Also Tuesday, a bill to increase the fees for filing various court documents, to help pay for 10 new district judgeships, was endorsed by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Under AB65, the increased fees would help pay for nine new district judgeships in the Las Vegas area and one new judgeship in the Reno area. Chief Justice Jim Hardesty has said the higher fees would raise about $7.4 million a year in the Las Vegas area and about $1.7 a year in the Reno area.

Hardesty also said rural Nevada counties would get "an enormous shot in the arm'' with new fee collections ranging from $100,000 to $250,000. He added that Nevada is behind on its filing fees compared with other states.

In other action, the Senate Energy, Infrastructure and Transportation Committee endorsed AB522, Assemblywoman Marilyn Kirkpatrick's renewable energy bill. The bill says, among other things, that lawmakers would approve the governor's appointment of an energy commissioner -- oversight that Gibbons opposes.

Also Tuesday, the Senate refused to back off from its amendment to a bill that steps up state record-keeping to help keep guns away from the mentally ill.

Under AB46, any court records on mental competency, insanity pleas, forced admissions to mental health facilities or appointments of a guardian for someone deemed to be incompetent would be forwarded to the state's central repository for crime records.

The state repository in turn would transmit the court records to the federal criminal background database, which gets queries from gun dealers when someone attempts to buy weapons.

Also, the Assembly refused to go along with Senate changes to AB60, which would require state or local health authorities to determine whether a building previously used to manufacture methamphetamine is safe for habitation.

That actions on both AB46 and AB60 mean that Senate-Assembly conferees now will try to resolve their differences. If they can't, both bills will die.