ALBANY - A weird legislative session just got weirder.

With perhaps two dozen measures from expanding the DNA data base to include all criminals to switching milk for Coke in schools still under negotiation, Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Senate leader Joseph Bruno said the 2007 session that is supposed to end Thursday now appears to face a rare summer encore.

Or will it?

“That's really the question,” Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said Tuesday. “Whether we are closing down the session Thursday or we are not closing down the session. The pressure is off if we're not.

“If you put out that you'll be back July 16, that will be the end of any hope to close down” Thursday, Silver said. “This is human nature and we are no different. When they know there is a real deadline here, people tend to work, people tend to take the best deal, and we do things a little differently.”

Lawmakers who prepared for many of Spitzer's promised changes for Albany weren't expecting what he said soon after.

“I know everybody talks about the session as though it ends at a certain level on Thursday,” said Spitzer, who can call lawmakers back to session any time. “This is a Legislature that will be back over the course of the months between now and the end of December, sometimes on a specific issue, sometimes on multiple issues.”

That's not welcomed news for lawmakers who insist they work July through December, but do it in their districts. In election years - the next one is 2008 - much of that off-session time is spent campaigning.

As for Bruno, he blamed Spitzer for trying to cram too much into the session.

“It seems there is more of a swirl this year than I've experienced in my 12 years as leader about too many issues, instead of getting pinpointed down to a precious few in terms of priorities, concentrate on those, get them done, and break,” Bruno said.

“The more issues, the better,” Spitzer later told reporters. “If everybody is exhausted by the time we go home, that's good. That's the way it should be.”

A strained relationship between Spitzer and Bruno was twisted a bit more this week after Republican senators grilled Spitzer's upstate economic developer in a confirmation hearing.

Spitzer called some of the pointed questioning “unfair” and “wrong,” then praised the official, Dan Gundersen, for helping to create and retain 14,000 jobs since January in projects around the state.

Spitzer, however, told reporters this week that he's still open to a bill that would create a commission to recommend the first pay raises for members of the Legislature in nearly a decade. That issue is now linked to pay raises for judges, which is widely supported.

On Tuesday, Spitzer suggested separating the measures so state judges could get their overdue raises.

“It would permit that issue to be separated from legislative pay raises so it is not held hostage by irrelevant issues,” said Spitzer, who has said he wants Albany reformed before raises are given.

Democratic senators had first sponsored the pay raise bill, which includes judges and lawmakers, making it veto proof, only to vote against it when Spitzer called for more reforms first. Late Tuesday, the minority Democrats introduced a bill that would only raise judges' salaries.

“Pay raises for state lawmakers are not appropriate until we reach a consensus on such critical issues as campaign finance reform, pay equity and paid family leave,” said Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith, a Queens Democrat. “How can we convincingly tell our constituents that elected officials deserve a raise when the process fails to follow through with measures that ensure equal opportunity?”

On Tuesday, Bruno said he won't separate the bill passed by the Senate's Republican majority on April 30.

“Why would I?” Bruno said. “We have been, as far as anybody remembers, together when increases take place for the judiciary - legislative increases take place, statewide office holders, statewide commissioners - they all rise. I mean, how long has it been? So what's magic about judges?”