BY CHELYEN DAVIS

State lawmakers will return to Richmond on Wednesday to start the 60-day 2012 legislative session.

Between now and mid-March, the General Assembly will write a new two-year budget, tackle reforms to the Virginia Retirement System and K-12 education, and address issues ranging from uranium mining to gun rights, abortion to tax preferences to election laws.

So far, only about 250 bills and resolutions are showing up on the legislature's website, but that number will swell--in the last long session, in 2010, nearly 3,000 bills and resolutions were filed.

The legislature's session lasts 60 days in even-numbered years, when the budget is adopted; it's 45 days in odd-numbered years.

Lawmakers will also face the first all-Republican leadership since 2001. In the Senate, the Republican majority is tenuous. There are 20 Democrats and 20 Republicans, with Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling being the tiebreaking vote that Republicans say gives them a majority. Democrats are still litigating that claim.

Republicans are expected to use their new power to push through conservative bills--abortion restrictions, gun rights, school choice and others--that in years past were killed by Senate Democrats.

That doesn't mean voters will see a wholesale push on social issues in particular. Republican leaders have hinted that they want to focus on jobs and the economy, issues they view as the ones that got them elected in November.

House Speaker Bill Howell, R-Stafford, said the Senate, even with a Republican majority, is "probably not as conservative as a lot of the makeup of the House." Some of the more conservative bills from the House "may not be warmly embraced" in the Senate, he said.

"It's not like all of a sudden there's going to be a dramatic change," Howell said.

Local lawmakers have already filed some bills likely to generate controversy.

Del. Mark Cole, R-Spotsylvania, has a bill that requires public schools to keep track of how many students are illegal immigrants or the children of illegal immigrants and qualify for English as a Second Language classes. The state Board of Education would then compile those statistics and assess how much money those students are costing local schools, and ask the federal government for reimbursement.