ALBANY — Gov. Paterson yesterday claimed President Obama’s crackdown on Wall Street pay could cost the state $1 billion.

But experts questioned the figure and the governor’s own Budget Division later admitted it could not back up the claim.

Paterson said of Obama’s move to halve executive compensation at seven banks that took federal bailout money: “New York just lost a billion dollars” in income taxes.

But E.J. McMahon, a fiscal-policy analyst for the Manhattan Institute, said that “we surely have lost tens of millions of dollars from this . . . but a billion seems high.

“My guess is that the impact is about a tenth as high as the governor says.”