ALBANY – The same political gridlock that has produced 20 consecutive years of late state budgets now seems to be gripping lawmakers’ efforts to fix the budget process itself.

Yesterday, in an unusual session held three days before Christmas, the Republican-led state Senate declined to override Governor Pataki’s veto of a budget reform plan that it had unanimously approved earlier this year.

Instead, the Senate unanimously approved a different package of changes in the budget process that was quietly introduced Sunday night. The changes have the support of the Republican governor but not the Democratic leadership of the Assembly.

The bill has no chance of becoming law, as the Assembly has no plans to return to the Capitol this year. Both the new legislation and the opportunity to override the veto of the old bill expire at midnight on New Year’s Eve.

Yet the Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, said the session was not an empty exercise, calling it a “head start” on a debate that will continue next year.

“We can override, but you don’t get a result,” Mr. Bruno said. “We’re going to try and get a result. … We’ve been talking, deliberating, and looking at our options. That’s what you do when you’re governing.”

He said Mr. Pataki, who is traveling in Europe, had agreed to sign the new bill if it passes the Assembly, while the Assembly had agreed to pass a modified version of the original bill early next year.

A proponent of the original legislation, Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group, called the failure to override the veto a setback for reform. He noted that Mr. Bruno promised last month to take up an override if the Senate, the Assembly, and the governor could not find an alternative by the end of the year.

“It’s clear the Senate buckled under pressure from the governor’s office,” Mr. Horner said. “There is no other way to explain it. So the governor killed budget reform.”

The bill vetoed by Mr. Pataki was supported by Nypirg, Common Cause, and the League of Women Voters but opposed by the Manhattan Institute, the Citizens Budget Commission, and business groups, which warn that it would lead to fiscal mismanagement.

The new version of the legislation has many features in common with the old. Both would automatically impose a “contingency budget,” based on the previous year’s spending, when lawmakers fail to agree on a new plan before the start of the fiscal year. Both would allow lawmakers to modify that contingency budget later in the year. And both would set up an independent office to referee disputes over how much revenue the state can expect to collect and how much spending programs are likely to cost.

Unlike the original bill, however, the new version would leave the start of the fiscal year at April 1, rather than moving it to May 1.The independent budget panel would be appointed jointly by the governor, the Assembly, and the Senate rather than just by the Legislature. The earlier bill was also coupled to a constitutional amendment that would need the approval of voters in November and could not take effect until 2006.

Mr. Pataki objected to the earlier legislation primarily because it weakened his control over fiscal affairs by allowing the Legislature to draft spending bills from scratch once a contingency budget goes into effect. Under the new version, Mr. Pataki would propose changes in the contingency budget and lawmakers would have the option of adding or subtracting from his proposals before approving them.

“While the governor still has some concerns about his legislation, he will not make the perfect the enemy of the good,” a spokeswoman for Mr. Pataki, Lisa DeWald Stoll, said yesterday. “Since the bill does mark significant progress toward ensuring on-time and fiscally responsible budgets, the governor would sign this legislation if it were sent to him.”

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, however, has “serious concerns” that the new bill, by requiring the Legislature to negotiate the contingency budget with the governor, would only create new opportunities for delay, spokesman Bryan Franke said.

Mr. Franke said the speaker intends to continue negotiations with the governor and the Senate until mid-January. In the absence of an agreement by then, the Assembly plans to reapprove both this year’s constitutional amendment – a necessary step to putting it on the ballot – and the accompanying legislation.

The streak of late budgets, which began in 1985 under Governor Cuomo, has gotten significantly worse during the decade that Messrs. Pataki, Bruno, and Silver have been in control. This year, the Legislature didn’t approve the $103 billion budget until August 11,setting a new record, and Mr. Pataki issued 195 vetoes that cut $235 million in spending and $1.6 billion in borrowing.

The delays and vetoes create uncertainty for local governments, social service groups, and other organizations that depend on state aid to balance their own books.

Legislators say a decision last week by the Court of Appeals upholding the broad budgetary control asserted by Mr. Pataki in recent years will only aggravate the problem.