After days of anticipation that a state budget deal would be announced by the end of the week, Gov. Kathy Hochul paid a visit to the third floor press hall, one floor up from the executive chamber, to tell reporters that it was not to be.

“I just wanted to let you all know that you can go home tonight, you all look a little tired,” she joked.

Hochul said it was a possibility that reporters would be trudging back to the Capitol on a rainy Albany Saturday for a morning or midday budget announcement, but also said closure could come in the next “day or two.”

Lawmakers will be conferencing remotely over the weekend, but that doesn’t preclude Hochul from announcing a handshake deal in the meantime while working to tie up loose ends. The expectation is that voting on budget bills will comence next week. 

Despite saying that the budget was on the cusp of a resolution, in the same breath Hochul also said there is still plenty of work to do.

“The process is closing down and we’re getting to a good place,” she said before adding “there’s a lot of issues on the table right now.”

Fiscal issues, including what to do about school aid and housing vouchers, remained up in the air Friday evening, sources told Spectrum News 1. 

To that end, Hochul said she was not even prepared to say how much the state was going to spend.

“No, not at this time,” she said when asked if leaders had a concrete number to provide.

In a significant acknowledgment of the realities facing the state, Hochul confirmed that her original proposal will be scaled back given current economic uncertainty and the potential for federal cuts. It comes after months of lawmakers indicating there would be minimal financial bracing taking place in the state budget, instead punting the tough decisions to a potential special session later in the year.

“You’ll see some reductions in what I had originally proposed and that’s unfortunate, but everything we put in our budget was to help New Yorkers deal with affordability in every day life, but we had to have some cutbacks,” she said.

It remains to be seen to what items will be modified and to what extent, but Hochul did say that her proposal for sending inflation rebate checks to some New Yorkers was important “now more than ever.”

Hochul also confirmed that money will be allocated to deal with the child care voucher crisis, where families in some counties, including New York City, are at risk of being turned away from New York’s Child Care Assistance Program because of a funding shortfall.

Multiple sources said one of the primary fiscal issues holding up the budget Friday was school aid, with concerns over how modifications to the Foundation Aid formula will impact different areas of the state driving the conversation, as updating poverty measures after nearly 20 years of stagnation have had unexpected results in some areas. The executive budget and both one-house proposals handled those updates in different ways.

If Hochul was concerned that school aid would be a further hold up, she didn’t show it.

‘No, not at all,” she said when asked, adding that districts should treat her budget proposal as their baseline.

Sources told Spectrum News 1 that the issue of face masks was resolved Friday, and a policy will make the budget in some form, likely one of the alternative “penalty enhancer” proposals that replaced Hochul’s initial pitch for an entirely separate criminal charge for "masked harassment" when individuals are wearing a face mask in the commission of a crime.

Hochul wouldn’t say, only reiterating that it was a late add to the budget process. She also wouldn’t she elaborate on any other issues that remain open.

“Everything else is still being negotiated, my policy hasn’t changed we don’t negotiate in public,” she said.

Earlier in the day, state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins downplayed the chances of seeing a resolution before the end of the work week.

“I can say it’s close, but I would not want to say this afternoon,” she told reporters. “But it’s close."