ALBANY — Governor Spitzer’s appeal for collegiality will be put to the test in coming weeks when he presents to doubtful lawmakers a fiscal budget that may call for a tightening of health care and education spending.

Before a Legislature that has grown disaffected with his rough style of governing, Mr. Spitzer used his second annual State of the State address to make a peace offering, urging lawmakers to set aside their grievances and to lower property taxes, restructure Medicaid, and pour billions of dollars into the public higher education system.

“We can work together for the common good, despite any political or personal differences, and we must,” Mr. Spitzer said. “Join me in good faith. I will meet you with an open hand, an open door, and an open mind. For we will realize this opportunity best if we work together in a spirit of cooperation.”

Mr. Spitzer is trying out a conciliatory tone as he seeks to stabilize his sinking poll numbers and regroup from a disastrous first year overshadowed by his feuding with Senate Republicans, ethics investigations, and unpopular policy proposals.

Hanging over the speech was a looming question: How does a governor drained of political capital persuade a skeptical, if not hostile, Legislature to unite around his ideas?

Lawmakers afterward questioned Mr. Spitzer’s ability to get back in their good graces, and they are bracing for a grinding budget battle that will take place against the backdrop of a $4 billion deficit.

Mr. Spitzer’s overture to lawmakers came with a warning of “economic storm clouds” that he said would require them to “adapt to the fiscal realities that are now upon us.”

He said he would submit an executive budget to lawmakers on January 22 that would make “tough choices,” but only hinted at what they will be.

While he more than once pledged not to raise taxes, he notably did not repeat his prior pledge to set aside more than $1 billion in additional school aid this year, a good sign that the administration will scale back its four-year plan to increase school aid by $7.6 billion and trim the expected aid to New York City’s public schools.

On the issue of Medicaid, Mr. Spitzer, who is expected to shift more money toward primary care, suggested another round of cuts to reimbursement rates for hospitals and nursing homes were in store, saying, “We must start paying for the right care in the right setting at the right place.”

The governor stepped into the grand, vaulted chamber not to the rousing ovation that welcomed him a year ago but to respectful, undeniably subdued applause that hushed soon after he approached the dais.

The change in tone and content of his speech was apparent immediately. Last year, Mr. Spitzer vowed to wage war against the “army of special interests,” and warned that ethics scandals and the free flow of money had shaken the public’s confidence in Albany. Yesterday’s speech lacked a single mention of lobbyists and special interests, and contained only a passing reference to his stalled effort to tighten campaign finance laws.

Not including the legislative leaders, Mr. Spitzer parceled out praise to seven lawmakers, including an apparently chagrined Senate Republican George Maziarz for his contribution on a bill last year overhauling the workers’ compensation system. “Sorry, George,” Mr. Spitzer remarked with a deep chuckle.

The governor marched through his 68-minute speech with a steady, almost monotonous cadence that emphasized the final word of each sentence. The dense programmatic content occasionally gave way to lighter, self-deprecating moments that received uncomfortable responses from lawmakers, who seemed unsure whether to laugh at the governor’s foibles.

“I understand that sometimes my talk is a little too plain, too direct,” he said to mostly silence. “Today, I’ll try to make that a virtue.”

Already lawmakers, particularly Assembly Democrats, are indicating opposition to Mr. Spitzer’s idea of placing a cap on local property taxes. Senate Republicans are balking at the administration’s proposal to monetize a portion of the state lottery to pay for establishing a $4 billion endowment for City University of New York and State University of New York.

Missing from the audience was Mr. Spitzer’s prime adversary, the 78-year-old Republican Senate leader, Joseph Bruno, whose wife of 57 years died on Monday. His absence removed tension from the room but also accentuated the personal gulf between Messrs. Spitzer and Bruno, whose bitterness over the administration’s botched attempt to entangle him in an ethics scandal has not subsided.

“If he wants to be open and cooperative, then we’ll see,” the chairman of the Senate investigations committee, George Winner, said. “It will be very difficult to repair the damage that was done last year.”

The Democratic speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, said he found the “tenor” of the governor’s speech to be encouraging, saying, “I believe it clearly demonstrates that Spitzer is continuing to mature in his role as New York State’s chief executive.”

For the administration, many proposals in the speech were not so much an extension of his first-year agenda as they were a correction.

The governor implicitly acknowledged that his effort to curtail property taxes last year — by pouring an additional $800 million of state money into local school tax subsidies and property tax rebates and adding an additional $1.7 billion to the education budget — had failed. Despite the new money, school property taxes, which hit the suburbs the hardest, increased by 7% last year.

The governor said he is forming a bipartisan commission led by the Nassau County executive, Thomas Suozzi, who challenged Mr. Spitzer in the 2006 Democratic gubernatorial primary, to draw up a plan for imposing a cap on property taxes and to recommend ways to remove wasteful spending by school districts.

“In the end, it’s a losing game for the taxpayer if the state gives you a rebate check on Monday and then on Tuesday your local government taxes it away,” Mr. Spitzer said.

While Mr. Spitzer urged fiscal restraint, lawmakers wondered if the governor was following his own prescription, questioning how the governor would afford his initiatives, such as setting up a $1 billion upstate capital projects fund and a $400 million affordable housing fund.

“When it came time to discussing how to pay for it, he fell silent,” a Democratic assemblyman of Westchester, Richard Brodsky, said. “And because your expectations of him are so high, that becomes somewhat glaring.”

A top aide to the governor, Paul Francis, said many of the governor’s most costly initiatives would be paid for either by issuing bonds or by tapping into existing reserves.

He said the speech was purposefully filled with less expensive proposals. For instance, instead of proposing to hire more state police to help upstate cities, such as Rochester and Albany, combat crime, the governor called for redeploying 200 state troopers to the localities.

“I think that the State of the State almost by definition is as much poetry as prose,” Mr. Francis said. “The fact is the budget will be the opposite, a very clear document that connects the dots and shows how the governor’s initiatives will be paid for.”