The Bloomberg administration would spurn more than $23 billion in extra money for the public schools over the next five years if New York City has to pay any part of the added cost, the city’s top lawyer said yesterday.

“If we have to pay any portion of this, no thanks,” the city’s corporation counsel, Michael Cardozo, said at a hearing in State Supreme Court in Manhattan in connection with the landmark lawsuit filed by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity. “We simply cannot do it. It will hurt our children.”

Mr. Cardozo said New York City receives 35% less in per-capita school aid than other urban school districts in the state, and he said the city gives Albany $11 billion more in tax revenues than it receives in state services.Those factors, and looming city budget deficits, mean the city would have to cut other key children’s services, such as library budgets and after-school programs, if it is forced to boost its financing on the schools, he said. In the current fiscal year, school spending is $14.8 billion, including $7.2 billion of city money.

“If New York had to pay a dime, it would be arbitrary and unreasonable,” Mr. Cardozo told Supreme Court Justice Leland DeGrasse, referring to the standard for determining financing suggested by the special referees appointed by the court in the case.

Both the tone and the substance of Mr. Cardozo’s comment about the city’s unwillingness to contribute any additional resources to the court-ordered increase in education funds differed from a reference by Mayor Bloomberg the day before in his State of the City address.

The mayor laid out a number of programs, including a $14 million plan to improve high schools, and said his administration was doing everything it could to make the city’s public-school system “the best in the nation.”

He drew applause when he said: “And it’s why we’ll be in court tomorrow, fighting to ensure that the landmark ruling in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit is upheld so that the state’s shameful shortchanging of our schoolchildren finally ends!”

Yesterday’s show of intransigence by the city struck a nerve among people who have been following and participating in the decade-plus of school-finance litigation.

“The idea of ‘no thanks’ is okay for the mayor but it’s not okay for the kids,” one of the lawyers, Joseph Wayland of Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett, said.

His colleague Michael Rebell, who is executive director and counsel at the campaign, said, “As representative of the children here, we take a very strong objection.”

He said the Campaign for Fiscal Equity thinks the city should pay 23% to 25% of the bill. The Board of Regents has said New York City’s share should be closer to 18%.The United Federation of Teachers has said 25%. Mr. Rebell said that in any event, no one thinks the city should be contributing 0%, except, apparently, the city administration.

The president of the teachers union, Randi Weingarten, who watched the hearing yesterday, called Mr. Cardozo’s statement “outrageous.”

She called the idea that the city would cut children’s services if it’s forced to spend one more dime on education “morally bankrupt,” and she said the idea that the city would not accept additional state funds if it would have to contribute anything was “preposterous.”

“It’s not their money,” she said in a telephone interview. “It’s money on behalf of children. It says a lot about whether or not somebody should be in charge of the schools if they don’t want to take the funds that actually are intended to systemically create a sound basic education for every child, if you would have to put your fair share in, which the masters said can’t be unreasonable or arbitrary.”

She also said that seeing Mr. Bloomberg on Tuesday saying he was fighting for children and hearing Mr. Cardozo yesterday declaring the city wouldn’t budget for any more school spending unless it cut from other key services was like “point-counterpoint.”

“They’re totally, diametrically different statements,” Ms. Weingarten said. “You can’t say one thing rhetorically and then act another way. One could say it’s pretty cynical that the mayor would say we’re going to fight for you and turn around 23 hours later and say not one more dime for education, and if you make us spend more, we’re going to cut services to children. I’m astounded.”

An expert on taxes and government budgets from the Manhattan Institute, E.J. McMahon, said that if the court took Mr. Cardozo literally and honored his request, the city wouldn’t be receiving any extra school money from the state.

“It’s just not realistic to expect that whatever happened as a result of this case would come at zero cost to the city,” he said. “If he really means ‘no thanks,’ then I guess the case is over.”

After Mr. Cardozo’s appearance at 60 Centre St., his office released a statement to clarify his “no thanks” comment.

“A result in this case that would force the City to shoulder the bill to make up for State historical under funding will not help the City’s school children, as the Mayor testified, because it would force the City to cut back on other services to those very children,” Mr. Cardozo said in the statement. “I therefore told the court ‘no thanks’ to convey the strong sentiment of the City that we would have nothing to be thankful for if the remedy required the City and its residents to pay for it.”

His spokeswoman, Kate Ahlers O’Brien, said Mr. Cardozo “meant his remark in an offhanded manner.”

Yesterday’s hearing in Lower Manhattan came 166 days after the deadline for the Legislature to come up with a solution to provide funds to ensure New York City children their constitutional right to a “sound basic education.”

It came 43 days after a panel of three special referees recommended that the city schools’ operating budget be increased gradually until it has risen by $5.63 billion a year, or 45%, in 2008-09. That’s slightly more than the amount requested by either the plaintiffs in the lawsuit or by Mr. Bloomberg, and almost three times the $1.93 billion proposed by Governor Pataki. The total increase in operating funds would amount to $14.1 billion over four years. The panel also recommended investing an additional $9.2 billion over the next five years in construction and renovation of school buildings.

At the hearing, lawyers for the Campaign for Fiscal Equity urged Judge DeGrasse to adopt the referees’ recommendations as an order of the court. The lawyers also asked that the court hold the state in contempt for its failure to meet the court mandate. The lawyers said the state should be fined $4.2 million for each day that it continues not to comply with the mandate. That sum, multiplied by 365, would approximate the first-year hike in financing recommended by the referees.

Judge DeGrasse didn’t say which way he was leaning on the fine, but the state’s deputy attorney general, Richard Rifkin, said he doesn’t expect the request would be granted. On behalf of the city, Mr. Cardozo urged Judge DeGrasse to adopt the referees’ recommendations with one proviso – not requiring extra accountability measures.

“There is no reason to create additional bureaucracy to run the city schools,” he told the court, explaining that the city already is held accountable by the federal No Child Left Behind act as well as a wide range of state and city oversight bodies.

Mr. Rifkin said it was evident “that the city is going to receive a very large sum of money.” But the deputy attorney general argued that the city should maximize the efficiency of its school spending, rather than receive any more money than it needs, and that accountability should be part of the reforms.

Also, he said, holding the state in contempt would be tantamount to ignoring the separation of powers. Mr. Wayland said he wasn’t asking the court to ignore the separation of powers, but rather to make sure the governor did not snub the judicial branch.