ALBANY - Gov. David Paterson has drawn a red circle around Tuesday on the calendar, marking what he says is a critical deadline for New York's deadlocked Senate to pass as many as 40 bills.

In the balance hang mayoral control of New York City schools and the authority local governments need to raise revenue to balance their budgets, most of which are due in November, without further increasing property taxes.

But deadlines in Albany have been known to be fluid and some say the urgency voiced by Paterson and Mayor Michael Bloomberg is more bluster than substance.

Others say that although the public sector won't come crashing down at midnight Tuesday if the Senate doesn't act, idle time in the Legislature can be an enemy of the public good.

“The clock is ticking,” Paterson said in his frequent admonishments to senators at odds over whether a June 8 coup by a Republican-dominated alliance toppled the Democratic majority. He uses words like “chaos” to describe what missing the midnight Tuesday deadline will mean to New Yorkers.

Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi, a Democrat, said the county will have to pay $100,000 a day in unnecessary salary costs if a bill to authorize borrowing about $75 million for retirement incentives for 550 employees isn't adopted by midnight Tuesday.

Democratic Assemblyman John McEneny said delay in authorizing a hotel-motel tax to fund an Albany County conference center won't be fatal, but could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in operating revenue that couldn't be recovered.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg called the threat of missing the midnight deadline crazy, but is still researching what it will mean to his control over city schools.

Delay looked certain Monday when new Democratic leader John Sampson said the issue wouldn't be taken up right away. Sampson is pushing a measure opposed by Bloomberg.

He said Monday that civil lawsuits by the powerful advocates seeking to undo mayoral control are inevitable if the deadline is missed, as is more delay.

In a place where entire state budgets were late for 20 straight years, some observers said delay isn't necessarily fatal, but can be costly on many levels.

“These could be remedied after the fact by passing a bill,” said veteran Assemblyman William Parment of Jamestown. “Obviously, there's a lot of brinksmanship going on.”

Assemblyman Robin Schimminger, a Democrat representing a district in Erie and Niagara counties and an authority on the state constitution, said the Legislature can try to pass bills to retroactively extend laws.

But uncertainty in the meantime can be big negatives, he said. For example, investors may be skittish if a county faces delays getting state authorization to borrow funds.

Schimminger also noted the state's Power for Jobs program, which provides lower cost energy to employers creating jobs, could continue even after the law lapses Tuesday night. But that could also send a bad message.

Republican Assemblyman James Tedisco, who has represented Schenectady County for more than 25 years in the Legislature, said municipalities may have to stop or curtail some services.

“But on the same token, we had 20 years of late budgets, some severely late,” he said, adding that the “world didn't end and the sky didn't fall ... the problem is the people's loss of faith and trust in government.”