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‘HEVESI’ RAP ON TOP DOC

ALBANY — Former Surgeon General and onetime New York Health Commissioner Dr. Antonia Novello pleaded not guilty to 20 criminal charges including four felonies yesterday in connection with her alleged use of four state workers as personal servants.

The charges, eerily similar to those that brought down former state Comptroller Alan Hevesi in December 2006, came in the wake of a scathing January report from state Inspector General Joseph Fisch that accused Novello of “habitually” using Health Department employees “as her personal chauffeurs for nonwork activities,” chalking up 2,500 hours in unnecessary overtime hours at a taxpayer cost of least $48,000.

Fisch’s report said Novello, 64, routinely used department employees, including a Medicaid-fraud investigator, to drive her to Macy’s and Saks Fifth Avenue in Manhattan for expensive shopping sprees, to buy her groceries, to rearrange her apartment furniture and even to water her plants.

Novello, a native of Puerto Rico who has been working at Disney Children’s Hospital in Orlando, Fla., was indicted by an Albany grand jury on one count of defrauding the government and three counts of offering a false instrument for filing, all felonies, and 16 counts of theft of services, a misdemeanor.

All the crimes allegedly occurred between January 2004 and Dec. 25, 2006, just days before Novello left office along with then-Gov. George Pataki, who appointed her.

If convicted on all charges, Novello, who became surgeon general in 1990 under President George H.W. Bush, would face up to 12 years in prison.

Novello, who was paid $256,000 annually as health commissioner, refused to comment after the arraignment, but her lawyer, E. Stewart Jones, claimed she was the victim of “vindictive” department employees.

“She is here because she has a bull’s-eye on her back,” said Jones. “Because politics is a contact sport. Because there are people who are vindictive and who wanted to get her ever since she left the state,” Jones continued.

Albany County District Attorney David Soares said, “The indictment unsealed [Tuesday] morning reflects our attempt to hold Dr. Novello accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”

Soares, however, complained that current state laws against the misuse of state workers aren’t strong enough.

“It is my hope that a review of both this case and the Alan Hevesi case by the governor and our [legislative] leaders will bring about a change in those laws so that our public officials will think twice before conducting their personal affairs on the taxpayer’s dime,” he continued.

Hevesi pleaded guilty to a single felony count of defrauding the government in December 2006 — just after winning a second term as state comptroller — in a case involving the use of a state chauffeur as a servant and personal aide to his then-ailing wife.

fredric.dicker@nypost.com