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TRAGIC CARPETS

Gov. Paterson was called on the carpet yesterday for spending nearly $40,000 in taxpayer funds on a handful of regal rugs for the Executive Mansion in the midst of the state’s budget crisis.

Two of the most expensive floor coverings – antique Turkish throws worth more than $20,000 – were bought on July 29, the same day Paterson ordered lawmakers to cut short their “vacations” and return to Albany for an emergency budget-cutting session.

News of the five-rug purchase, totaling $37,741, comes just days after Paterson failed to win $2 billion in spending cuts that would have slashed school aid midyear and suspended pay for state workers.

“It makes me very angry. It should make everybody angry,” Public Employee Federation President Kenneth Brynien said.

“Don’t say you need money from the taxpayers and the employees of the state when you’re throwing money down the drain.”

Blair Horner, of the New York Public Interest Research Group, said: “It’s a terrible symbolic gesture. At the same time you’re threatening possible layoffs and cutting back on education and health, the last thing you should be doing is going out and purchasing an expensive rug at taxpayer expense.”

Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco (R-Schenectady) called on Paterson to return the fancy furnishings.

Paterson, like his recent predecessors, uses the 19th-century Albany mansion only for occasional events and sporadic overnight stays.

“We have to keep that mansion in the kind of condition it’s in because it’s a treasure to the public,” said Office of General Services Commissioner John Egan.

Paterson spokeswoman Risa Heller said the governor was aware that the rugs were being installed in September, but learned of the cost only yesterday, when the purchase was reported by the Albany Times Union.

The Paterson administration yesterday repeatedly refused to let reporters into the mansion to view the rugs.

The state bought two of the rugs from Stark Carpet, an exclusive, appointment-only East Side rug dealer that helped furnish the Reagan White House, Gracie Mansion and the historic Vanderbilt home.

The company has donated more than $8,000 to election campaigns of Paterson and his predecessor, Eliot Spitzer.

The carpets – sold to the state by Stark employee Gretchen Auer – were assembled from scraps of antique Turkish rugs in a factory in New York for $4,350.

Stark General Manager Ed Haleman said the state was looking for something cheap that used local labor and helped gain “green” building status for the 20,000-square- foot mansion, which was fitted with solar panels last year.

“They could have had the Bentley instead of the Ford,” Haleman said. “I could’ve sold them a $150,000 carpet, but I gave them the used car.”

brendan.scott@nypost.com