IT WAS A DAY of flowery rhetoric followed by the outlines of a more down-to-earth legislative agenda as the Massachusetts Senate convened for the first session of its new two-year term today. 

The rhetoric came in the nominating and seconding speeches for Senate president. Illustrious figures ranging from Pericles to Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, JFK, and Bill Clinton were quoted as senators took the floor. But it was the words of a woman overwhelming reelected as the chamber’s leader, Therese Murray, that State House watchers were focused on.

Murray, beginning what will be her last full term at the helm of the 40-member Senate under current rules, laid out a range of priorities for the coming two years that include welfare reform, a fix for the state’s ailing transportation system, and measures to address gun violence and gaps in the state’s sex offender classification system.  Murray’s speech was short on specific details, but offered a roadmap of the major issues she wants to see tackled.

Murray, who spent time on welfare as a single mother and then helped oversee an overhaul of the state welfare system as a senator in 1995, said the reforms are falling short of their goal of moving people from dependency to independence and out of poverty.  Though she did not identify them more specifically, Murray said there are “loopholes” that must be addressed in the current law that are allowing people to linger on public assistance and not make their way toward self-sufficiency.

Murray said the horrific school shooting last month in Newtown, Connecticut, has prompted discussion with Gov. Deval Patrick and House Speaker Robert DeLeo on ways to further protect Massachusetts residents from such violence “without demonizing the mentally ill.”  Speaking after the Senate session, Murray said she supports the rights of sportsmen to have guns. But, in an apparent reference to large magazine automatic weapons, she said, “I don’t know if you need these big weapons to kill deer.”

She also said the state’s sex offender registry system needs to be examined in the wake of a recent case of alleged child sexual abuse by a Level  1 sex offender who was working at his wife’s Wakefield daycare center.  Murray said the man, John Burbine, should never have been classified as only a Level 1 offender, the least dangerous designation in the state system. She said legislation to revamp the sex-offender classification system will be “taken very early” in the new session.

Murray, who championed the 2009 merger of state transportation agencies and other changes under the banner of “reform before revenue,” said those measures have gone a long way toward addressing the “most immediate problems” facing the system.  Murray suggested that the work of addressing the state’s underfunded transportation needs is not over, but she offered no clues as to how receptive she might be to a plan calling for new revenue to fund the system, something that many people think is necessary.  Murray told reporters outside the Senate chambers that she was waiting to see details of a long-term financing proposal expected to be put forward early this year by the state Department of Transportation board.  She said any solutions will have to cover transportation agencies statewide and not be targeted at the MBTA.

While a lot of attention has been paid to the huge gap the state faces in transportation financing, Murray teed up a new area with a gaping budget hole: the state’s water systems.  Citing a report submitted by a commission established two years ago by the Legislature, Murray said the state faces a gap of about $10.2 billion over the next 20 years in funding drinking water infrastructure and a further $11.2 billion over that period of time in funding for wastewater systems.

Three new senators were sworn in: Michael Barrett of Lexington, who is making a return to the body after serving in the Senate in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, Joan Lovely of Salem, and Kathleen O’Connor Ives of Newburyport.

Attorney General Martha Coakley and Treasurer Steve Grossman took in the proceedings from seats on the Senate floor, as did former Senate president Robert Travaglini, who now works as a lobbyist.