ALBANY -- Oops.

It turns out New York's state budget was not really completed when everyone thought it was.

And red-faced officials rushed Wednesday to avoid shattering the all-time latest state budget record for passage and signing into law of a state fiscal plan.

Blame it all on a mix-up that began Aug. 3, which led to Gov. David Paterson the next day signing what he thought was the final component of the 2010 budget.

One problem: It was the wrong bill.

The Senate on Aug. 3 approved the last budget bill -- known as the "revenue" legislation -- that calls for more than $1 billion in new tax and fee hikes and several hundred million dollars of other revenue "actions" to help balance the $136 billion fiscal plan.

The Senate quickly shipped the bill over to the Assembly, which had already passed the bill in June. Because it approved the bill first, the Assembly had the legal duty to send the bill to the governor for his signature.

That's what the Assembly did that night -- only it was an earlier version of the bill before final amendments were made back in late June.

"The Assembly gave us the wrong bill. The governor signed the wrong bill," acknowledged Erik Kriss, a Paterson budget division spokesman.

The Paterson administration said the foul-up will not require the Legislature's return since the correct bill was approved by the both houses. Instead, the right bill was sent Wednesday by the Assembly, and aides said he was expected to sign the bill in Manhattan Wednesday night.

Kriss said no tax increases were due to immediately go into effect, so he said there was no practical impact by the wrong bill being signed.

Asked how it happened, Kriss said, "That's a question for the Assembly."

Sisa Moyo, a spokeswoman for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, said both legislative houses passed the correct version of the final budget bill. The Assembly enacted it more than a month before the Senate's action on August 3.

But she said through an administrative error an older version of the budget bill was sent to the governor. She noted the measure sent to Paterson -- and signed -- was not "live" because that version had not passed and had been amended by the final bill.

"Just in order to dot the i's and cross the t's he's going to sign the bill today," she said.

Even if Paterson did not sign the final piece of the budget until Wednesday night, Moyo said the late budget record -- Aug. 11 -- was not in jeopardy because the final legislative passage occurred Aug. 3 by the Senate.

But not all officials agreed. "We didn't break the record. We just tied it," said one state source.

        This morning, the issue of the wrong bill was the first topic during Paterson's weekly interview on WOR radio in New York.

     "I don't know," Paterson said when asked how he got the incorrect version sent to him by the Assembly. Paterson said aides delivered the correct bill to him Wednesday in Manhattan and he signed it into law.

He noted the bill he mistakenly signed a week ago did not become law because that version did not pass both houses and was an earlier Assembly version of the budget bill.

     "Theoretically, if there was some ill-intention here, they could get me to sign the bill they wanted passed and that would be the law,'' he said, quickly noting that could not have happened in this case.

"It's like Rasputin. It never goes away," Paterson said of the 2010 budget.

Indeed, Paterson said lawmakers will have to return, again, to Albany before Sept. 9 to pass legislation appropriating how to spend hundreds of millions of federal dollars. Congress this week approved the additional aid for the states in Medicaid and education funding.

     "They won't be happy (about returning), but if they want to use that money, it's their job," he said during this morning's interview.

The Senate is already making tentative plans to return next week to Albany. The Assembly has not revealed its plans.

tprecious@buffnews.comnull