Left unsettled when the state Senate adjourned this week was the future of the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council, the independent watchdog agency that tracks the cost and quality of medical care offered by the state's hospitals and paid for by its insurers.

You may not have heard the news, drowned out as it was by all the Wall Street wailing, but it's a big deal to the business groups, health care unions, doctors and consumer advocates who rely on the council's public reports on hospital death rates and cardiac surgery costs.

The council, known as PHC4, has been in limbo since the summer, when Gov. Ed Rendell signed an executive order extending the life of the council and the work of its 40-plus employees. Because the council isn't a permanent state agency, it existence depends on periodic legislative reauthorization.

But the bill that would have reauthorized PHC4 became tangled in the governor's larger fight with Senate Republicans over the size of Mr. Rendell's plan to extend health insurance to hundreds of thousands of uninsured Pennsylvanians.

Mr. Rendell's emergency order in July gave his administration and Senate Republicans three more months to negotiate a compromise on his insurance plan and the GOP's proposal to again extend malpractice insurance subsidies to doctors.

They failed to do so. The order is set to expire on Nov. 30.

After that? Mr. Rendell could again resuscitate the agency with an executive order, or he could let it sunset, putting pressure on the newly seated, 2009-2010 version of the state Legislature to tackle the issue.

Other business-related items from the Legislature:

• Both legislative chambers passed an energy bill that imposes new requirements on energy conservation, and the governor intends to sign it.

Left out of the bill, however, were new caps on electricity prices. Electric rate caps are set to expire for many utilities in the coming three years, and if new caps aren't in place, consumer groups are worried that electric rates could jump.

• A bill that would create a new housing trust fund, sponsored by Sen. John Pippy, R-Moon, moved out of the Senate by a 50-0 vote this week. After the bill arrived in the House, it was referred to the chamber's commerce committee.

The Legislature and the governor have yet to agree on a revenue source to seed the trust fund, or the amount of the fund.

• The governor also signed into law a bill that will create the Uniform Construction Code Review and Advisory Council. The council will recommend possible changes to the code, which sets the standards for most of the construction projects in the state.