ALBANY — Troopergate figure Darren Dopp must pay a $10,000 ethics fine for his role in the effort by then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer and aides to use the State Police against a political foe, a state court has ruled.

State Supreme Court Justice Kimberly O’Connor upheld, on technical grounds, the fine imposed by the Public Integrity Commission, the panel announced yesterday.

“Our free and democratic society simply does not and cannot condone such abuse of a law-enforcement agency,” said Barry Ginsberg, the commission’s executive director.

Dopp, then Spitzer’s communications director, in June 2007 played a central role in gathering and leaking supposedly damaging information concerning then-Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, who was Spitzer’s chief GOP nemesis.