Senate Democrats could have kept their majority in the Senate had they passed a tax cap back in 2010, former Gov. David Paterson told Fred Dicker on Talk-1300 AM radio this morning.

The former governor, who had pushed a 4 percent limit on annual property tax increases in his last year as governor, had inserted the provision in an emergency budget extender. But Democrats, in charge of the Senate at the time, jettisoned the proposal alongside the Democratic-controlled Assembly.

“Ever since that moment, I really think that opened the door for the disarray that goes on there,” said Paterson, now the host of a an afternoon drive-time talk show on WOR in New York City. How they could walk away from the property tax cap is an answer I never got, and I never asked another question.”

The 2010-11 state spending plan was one of the latest in the state’s history. It didn’t pass in its entirety until the middle of August after a summer-long marathon of special legislative sessions.

Republicans regained control of the Senate in 2010 after winning two very narrow races in Buffalo and on Long Island.

Newly minted Gov. Andrew Cuomo passed a 2 percent tax cap that included narrow exemptions for pension and tax base growth.

Senate Democrats had captured a narrow, 2-seat majority in 2008 for the first time since the 1960s. But their tenure in power was marred by political in-fighting, a coup launched by two disaffected members allied with Republicans and the failure to pass an independent redistricting process that could doom them to another loss this fall.

Paterson told Dicker he was just as boggled by the Democrats’ failure to pass an independent redistricting commission while they were in power. Democrats believe the shear weight of their enrollment advantage combined with a non-partisan process would have led to keeping control of the Senate.

But Democrats never pressed the issue and Sen. Malcolm Smith famously said Democrats would redistrict Republicans “into oblivion.”

“Why would you forfeit something that would help you…because then the Democrats we would have been drawing the lines together and not the situation that has always existed,” Paterson said. “Every time I’d raise the question they’d get mad at me.”

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