ALBANY — A 4 percent wage hike that kicked in Thursday for 120,000 state workers should be frozen as one solution to help the government erase its soaring deficit, Gov. David A. Paterson said.

“We’re not asking because we’re trying to gouge anyone. We’re asking because the state is now $9.2 billion in deficit,” Paterson said on a New York radio station. “When is someone going to get it? We have run out of money. We can’t meet our obligations.”

Union leaders gave Paterson a cold shoulder.

Stephen Madarasz, a spokesman for the Civil Service Employees Association, said the Paterson administration “doesn’t have any credibility” and has been unwilling to listen to union ideas for saving money. He noted that the sides did agree last year to a new pension tier that will cut retirement costs for public employers.

Unionized state workers started receiving a 4 percent pay hike Thursday under a deal that former Gov. Eliot Spitzer negotiated. The current contracts expire next April, and the unions said they have no interest in reopening them. Paterson cannot unilaterally rescind the pay hike.

In a later statement, Paterson noted the 4 percent raises, which add about $400 million in payroll expenses, follow a total of 9 percent wage hikes over the past three years for unionized state workers.

“In the past, the leaders of New York’s public employee unions have said that refusing to forgo a 4 percent raise simply represents their effort to uphold the ‘principle’ of not renegotiating past contracts — even if the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression occurs within the contract period,” he said.

“To that argument, I would respectfully note that there is a higher principle. Public employees are, above all else, public servants. Our first responsibility is to the taxpayers.”

“I do not believe that, at a time when more than 300,000 of the hardworking New Yorkers who pay our salaries are out of a job, it is fair to continue the status quo with one segment of the work force,” he added.

Paterson’s comments came after a top administration official told The Buffalo News this week that state workers face possible “massive” layoffs early next year when a no-layoff deal Paterson made last year ends.

Paterson made that deal in July in order to get two major unions — the CSEA and the Public Employees Federation— to back his plan for creation of a new pension tier for newly hired workers that will cost state and local governments less. The agreement says Paterson will not lay off, or threaten to lay off, CSEA or PEF workers until after Dec. 31.

The governor said publicly what one of his advisers said privately the other day: The public employee unions are not cooperating with efforts to get state workers to share in the fiscal pain.

Paterson said unions again rejected his call for a five-day deferral in pay, which workers would get back when they left the payroll. “Every time we ask them for something, we’ve been asked for something in return,” he said on WOR Radio.

Paterson praised the state workers but said they have a “real and concrete opportunity to demonstrate they understand the dire nature of this fiscal and economic crisis and that they are willing to become a serious partner in addressing it.”

But Senate Democratic Conference Leader John Sampson of Brooklyn, who has to consider cuts to popular programs like education and health care in an election year, signaled a possible interest in a pay freeze. He called on the governor’s Office of Employee Relations, which negotiates contracts with the unions, to “send a formal notice for bargaining to address the issues concerning our public work force.”

Sampson said that in the past, “unions have been part of the solution.” As he praised public workers, he added, “We welcome them as our partners in giving New Yorkers a fair and responsible budget they can afford.”

Paterson has included $250 million in work-force savings in his 2010 budget plan. The Senate Democrats have put the number at $400 million. But neither has worked out how to achieve those savings.