ALBANY — Gov. Kathy Hochul and legislative leaders worked furiously Friday to try to agree on a new state budget but, as in the past three weeks, there was no deal.

"We are still talking," said Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins on Friday afternoon amid a day of closed-door negotiation and meeting with her Democratic majority conference. She said "most of the top lines," including total spending, were completed, but other areas "need to be cleaned up."

"But I do believe it is very close," Stewart-Cousins told reporters who caught her on the way into a private meeting to update Democrats.

Hochul said Friday evening that a deal could be struck over the weekend or early next week. That could allow budget bills to be voted on next week.

The state budget was due April 1.

In January, Hochul proposed a $252 billion budget that would increase state operating funds spending by $10.5 billion, or 7.9%. There are also several policy issues wrapped into talks, including banning student cellphones in schools.

Hochul said she has had to make some "cuts" in her budget proposal, but she wouldn’t detail them. "You will see some reductions in what I originally proposed," she said. "We’ve had to make some cutbacks."

In January, Hochul proposed tax rebate checks and tax credits for middle-class families. But she said the threatened loss of federal aid and a potential recession are making the economic outlook darker. She said Friday, however, that the rebate checks and tax cuts are still a good idea "now more than ever."

More budget negotiations were planned for Saturday and those will likely would go into Sunday. Even if a deal is announced over the weekend, Hochul and the legislature still would need time to draft the nine, huge budget bills on which the legislature has to vote.

Under the state constitution, the bills are required to "age" for three days so the public and legislators can read the thousands of pages of text. Governors have traditionally been reluctant to use their power of a "message of necessity" to suspend the three-day review for budget bills because it's bad political optics to approve billions of dollars in taxpayers’ money with little or no time to review and debate the legislation.

"It’s all secret," said John Kaehny of the Reinvent Albany good-government group. "There are no floor debates, no committee hearings. There is zero transparency whatsoever and they are making the biggest decisions they will make all year in secret."

"It’s a massive exercise in avoiding responsibility and hiding what they are doing from the people who elected them," Kaehny said in an interview. "It’s getting worse every year because they are packing more and more into the budget instead of working them through the regular session."

"I’ve seen the least lack of transparency in this budget as I have in my going-on-44 years in the Legislature," said Sen. James Tedisco (R-Saratoga). "They say democracy died in darkness. It’s getting dimmer and dimmer."

In a wide-ranging impromptu news conference Friday, Hochul responded to a reporter’s question by saying she wouldn’t rule out naming the Penn Station renovation project for President Donald Trump, but made it clear she hadn’t given the matter any thought.

The Trump administration recently said it would take over the cost of renovating of Penn Station, which has been a state project. Hochul said the takeover could save the state more than $1.2 billion, which she said could be applied to the state budget.