ALBANY – Gov. Kathy Hochul on Tuesday balked at criticism over blowing the state budget deadline by nearly a month — arguing New Yorkers only care about things such as fixing bail laws in the end.

“I said I’m going to get the right budget, so New Yorkers want me fighting for bail. They want me fighting for affordability. They want me fighting for ways to help lift up their family circumstances,” Hochul said at the state Capitol.

“I don’t think New Yorkers or anybody outside this room will be focused on the length of time. They’ll be looking at the quality of my blueprint for leading this state,” she added about the tardiest state budget in more than a decade.

Albany Democrats are now eyeing the end of the week to announce a final spending plan, which is expected to exceed $227 billion and yield mixed results for the embattled Dem governor, despite her happy talk after multiple extenders were needed to keep state government running in the meantime.

An easygoing gubernatorial attitude to the statutory deadline for finishing a budget deal is a big change from disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who Hochul replaced in 2021 after years of more or less on-time budgets.

“The only thing holding up the budget is her incompetence,” a Democratic insider groused of Hochul to The Post on Tuesday.

“People now realize Cuomo was right to keep her away from any actual responsibility besides cutting ribbons,” the source added about Hochul, who served as Cuomo’s lieutenant governor.

Hochul had reportedly held up progress on a broader budget for weeks by demanding Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) and state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers) first hash out bail and housing issues.

Some legislative sources lamented at the time how the governor micromanaged negotiations and was known to shift her stated goals while holding out for concessions from Heastie and Stewart-Cousins.

“It’s almost like there is a nervousness of closing anything,” a source told The Post last week. “At some point, you have to trust your team – and there seems to be a lack of trust.”

Heastie and Stewart-Cousins eventually agreed to a compromise deal that would loosen limits on cash bail for serious crimes by eliminating a requirement that judges impose the “least restrictive” conditions to ensure defendants show up in court.

But the legislative leaders held their ground on another provision that progressives warned would effectively allow judges to jail anyone ahead of their trials who they suspect might endanger public safety or get accused of additional offenses.

Hochul also abandoned her housing proposal in its entirety after fierce resistance from suburban legislators who lamented how the plan would undermine local zoning control by forcing increased residential building.

“I would say from fairly early on … the Legislature show they were not interested … So I said, ‘Let’s not waste any more time on this,’ ” Hochul said Tuesday, without elaborating on why she continued the push for so long if it were so obvious from the get-go that the Senate and Assembly would not back her plan.

Lawmakers also swiftly shut down her sudden push to loosen state restrictions on methane emissions – a proposal not included in her original draft budget – to mitigate projected increases in energy costs as New York pushes to meet climate goals enshrined in state law.

Hochul appears on the brink of additional concessions of her own on a range of issues now that legislators have given her a partial win on bail.

But a remaining sticking point in budget talks is a proposal to allow state agencies to close illegal pot dispensaries while dramatically increasing fines on businesses lacking state licensees, with Assembly Democrats reportedly worried about letting authorities to go too hard on accused bad actors.

“I want to be able to shut them down,” Heastie said Monday of the roughly 1,500 black-market shops operating in the Big Apple.

But “you want the cannabis industry to thrive, so trying to come up with a mechanism that allows for that to happen without overreach is I think the biggest issue,” he added.

Still, a deal appears at hand to raise the state’s minimum wage to $17 per hour while pegging future increases to inflation, a more far-reaching idea than what Hochul had floated.

New York City also will only have to pay about a third of the $500 million Hochul wanted for the MTA, with suburban lawmakers blocking plans to raise a payroll tax on commuters from outside the city, too, Spectrum News reported Monday.

Progressives are still pushing to raise income taxes on the wealthy against Hochul’s wishes as state budget talks begin to wind down.

And Hochul is still fighting fellow Democrats over a proposed ban on flavored tobacco.

But bail changes and the agreement to allow more charter schools will give Hochul some political cover to claim victory in a final spending deal — two months after the defeat of her nominee to lead New York’s highest court. That defeat sparked talk about a new era in Albany where an emboldened Legislature would increasingly challenge the governor.

“What matters most are the results. The timeline is an insider’s game. Voters, to the extent they follow the budget, will care about the end successes,” Democratic political consultant Jake Dilemani told The Post.

But critics on Hochul’s political right and left say the ends will hardly justify the means for the governor, who vowed to remake Albany as a more transparent place after replacing Cuomo and before leaning on many of the same closed-door strategies in the budget process over the past two years.

“A budget a few days late is a late budget. A budget that is several weeks late is the result of a dysfunctional process led by a governor who fails at leading and a legislature blind to compromise,” Conservative Party State Chair Gerard Kassar said.

Democratic political consultant Camille Rivera similarly said Hochul has undermined her own case among progressives by giving up the affordable-housing fight and ignoring calls for higher taxes on the wealthy while seemingly going all in with her bail proposal, delaying a final budget for weeks.

“New Yorkers want a functional government … It’s not OK what happened, and folks need to reflect on how it doesn’t happen again,” Rivera said.

Hochul for her part noticeably chafed Tuesday at the idea that she was bringing “dysfunction” back to state government by invoking her early experiences in Albany from four decades ago while reiterating that she sees “a path to wrap up” the latest state budget.

“I was an assembly intern. I thought the budgets were due in July and August. That’s when they showed up. That’s how it was for decades. I’m not interested in going back to that,” she said.

As for political defeats such as her failed housing plan, Hochul leaned on the wisdom of NHL great Wayne Gretzky despite the comparisons her comment invited to dysfunctional boss Michael Scott from the TV show “The Office.”

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take,” Hochul said Tuesday.