ALBANY –The Legislature’s top Democrat and Republican on Thursday squared off in a new format — a telephone conference call — that featured name calling and motive questioning amid stalled efforts to erase the state’s $3.2 billion deficit.

With Gov. David A. Paterson at times trying to play peacemaker, Senate GOP leader Dean Skelos tried several times to get Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to publicly reveal what programs he would cut to shave the deficit. The call was monitored by reporters.

“We all have a right to know this as we negotiate,” said Skelos, who represents the Senate’s 30 Republicans in the 62-member chamber.

“I don’t believe that the secretary of state swore you in as district attorney or prosecutor here,” Silver snapped back at Skelos. “You had the telephone or whatever it is for the last 10 minutes and all you do is ask questions. You have not proposed one cut.”

“This is a practical discussion. Put the politics back in your [GOP] conference,” Silver added.

Skelos then outlined “ideas” to save about $450 million that the GOP proposed weeks ago.

“You called me a prosecutor. You were a very good trial lawyer in obfuscating what the issue is here. And the issue is we have a right to know—the public has a right to know — what cuts in spending are you supportive of,” Skelos told Silver.

But Silver never answered with specifics.

“I’m supportive of cuts that bring us a balanced budget,” said the Assembly leader, the most powerful Democrat in the Legislature, who has a reputation for seldom showing his hand in public when negotiating a budget.

By the end of the half-hour call, Paterson, Silver, Skelos, Senate Democratic Conference Leader John Sampson and Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb managed to agree on one thing: their respective fiscal staffs would meet jointly to try to settle differences before lawmakers return Monday to try once more — after failing during this week’s special session — to balance the budget.

The key stumbling blocks are education and health care — accounting for more than half of the state’s spending and represented by Albany’s most powerful special interests. Paterson proposes more than $1 billion in midyear spending cuts in these areas.

The governor—the target of advertising and publicity campaigns by health care and teachers unions—lashed out at his critics as “irresponsible.” Paterson said that he wants to keep the state from reaching the level of fiscal distress of many other states and that all must share the pain.

“You can’t just keep saying, ‘We take zero [cuts],’ ” then defend that stance as, “Health care is all about patients and education is all about children,” Paterson said.

The governor also maintains that nearly three-quarters of school budgets are administrative, and that many districts have money in reserves to cover funding cuts from Albany.

Robert Lowry, deputy director of a state association for school superintendents, noted that the most recent U. S. Census data from 2006 found administrative costs for schools amount to about 5.5 percent of a district’s budget.

Lowry said Paterson’s assertion that “administration” and “administrative” costs account for most of school district budgets is “just not true.”

Paterson also noted that the current fiscal bloodletting is a warm-up for a larger effort in the months ahead—reducing a projected $7 billion deficit in the 2010 budget that begins April 1.