By FREDRIC U. DICKER, State Editor

ALBANY – Gov. Paterson grimly warned yesterday that New York faces an “insurmountable” series of budget gaps totaling an unprecedented $27.5 billion over the next four years.

“We’re going to have an economic forecast in the next 24 hours that I think is going to make it very clear to all of you not only what will probably be a deficit next year, $1 billion over what we thought even a couple of days ago, but we’re going to have out year [future-year] deficits that are starting to reach numbers that we have never discussed in this state,” said Paterson.

“Right now, we have to bring some fiscal reality to this state,” added Paterson, who has vowed to slash the state’s current $122 billion budget by up to 10 percent next year.

“Sometimes, I wonder what’s been going on around here because we are deep in debt and I don’t know that we recognize that right now.”

While Paterson said he had talked with the leaders of the Legislature about cutting the current-year budget, “right now we are really in such deficit that it appears to me even that act is still going to land us in a place that is going to be so hard for the general public to recognize how we’re trying to address the problem because the problems are so insurmountable.”

State officials are projecting a $5 billion deficit for next year and an average of $7.6 billion for each of the following three fiscal years after that.

And it could be even worse.

An aide to Paterson said last night that the governor’s project deficit figures – more details of which will be made public today – were “the minimum” amounts.

While Paterson called the looming fiscal crisis “insurmountable,” he is under a legal obligation to keep the state budget balanced and his aides said he would do so.

The state is being hit hard by declining tax revenues due to the slowing economy.

The problem hasn’t been helped by a nearly 5 percent spending increase in the recently passed budget, which some fiscal experts warned was too much.

Paterson’s somber fiscal assessment came as he gave qualified support to a Senate Republican plan to help hard-pressed motorists by slashing the 32-cent-a-gallon state gasoline tax.

“It’s a meritorious proposal, if in fact the savings are passed along to consumers,” said Paterson, who added that he feared gasoline wholesalers and distributors would fail to do so.

“What I’d like to hear before I give it my full support is some kind of guarantee” of passing the savings on.

The Assembly’s top Democrat, however, quickly rejected the tax cut proposal and blamed President Bush for runaway gasoline prices.

“Eliminating the gas tax in New York for the summer months will result in a $500 million shortfall in revenues that are dedicated to road and bridge construction across the state – and we already have a deficit in funding for these vital programs,” said Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver of Manhattan.