Members of the scandal-scarred state Legislature may boycott Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s inauguration this Thursday and his State of the State Address Jan. 7 in an angry protest over their failure to win a long-hoped-for pay raise, The Post has learned.

The boycott is being actively discussed by lawmakers from Cuomo’s own Democratic Party, who accuse the governor of deep-sixing what would have been their first pay raise in 16 years out of fear of a political backlash. If a boycott is mounted, many Republican legislators are also expected to go along, a GOP lawmaker said.

“Cuomo is afraid to take the heat on this, the merits be damned,’’ said one Democratic lawmaker.

Another said, “The members are furious. This is something they really wanted and believed was justified. I mean, it’s been 16 years.’’

A Siena College poll earlier this month found 63 percent of New York voters opposed a pay hike, with just 28 percent in favor. Support was greatest in the city, 35 percent, dropping to 31 percent in the suburbs and to a rock-bottom 19 percent upstate.

It’s not clear how many lawmakers have been invited to Cuomo’s inauguration, which will be held in New York City and Buffalo, rather than in Albany, as it was four years ago.

But all 213 members of the Legislature are invited to the State of the State Address in Albany, and it’s there that a sizeable boycott would be noticed.

Cuomo and the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Legislature have been holding pay-raise talks for weeks, with the possibility that top aides to Cuomo, and the governor himself, could see their salaries increased in a final deal.

But Cuomo has insisted he would agree to a pay hike only if the Legislature addressed a long series of criminal and ethical charges against many of its members by passing several reforms, such as a limit on outside incomes earned by lawmakers and a system of publicly financed campaigns.

The legislative leaders, however, responded that Cuomo was making demands he knew were unacceptable in a politically motivated effort to appear as a reformer because he’s under federal investigation for dismantling his anti-corruption Moreland Commission panel.

The state constitution prohibits lawmakers from raising their salaries during their two-year terms in office, so unless a pay hike takes effect on the last day of the year, Wednesday, they won’t be eligible for a raise until Jan. 1, 2017.

Cuomo’s well-known difficulty in recruiting top-level replacement staffers for a second term is generally attributed to his obsessive penchant for micro-management, a legendary willingness to harshly berate those he believes haven’t served him well, and to US Attorney Preet Bharara’s ongoing criminal probe of his Moreland Commission meddling.

But there are two more reasons that recruitment has been difficult: a growing belief in top Democratic circles that any hope Cuomo had to run for president has been lost and that, as a result, his second term as governor will likely be his last.

“Cuomo has been shaking trees in New York City and nationally for new staff with little luck,’’ a prominent Democratic consultant told The Post.

“The general consensus is that no one wants to work for a politically damaged control freak with no national profile.’’

During Cuomo’s first term, a big draw for would-be staffers was the possibility that the governor would run for president in 2016, or in 2020 at the latest.

But the 2016 scenario faded dramatically over the past two years with the rise of Hillary Rodham Clinton as the all-but-inevitable Democratic Party candidate.

And the 2020 scenario all but vanished this year with Cuomo’s estrangement from his party’s left-of-center “progressive wing,’’ as demonstrated by his inability in September to win little more than 60 percent of the vote against virtually unknown challengers in his own Democratic primary.

“Nobody I know expects Cuomo to run for a third term, and that includes the people who work for him,’’ one of the state’s best-known Democratic activists told The Post.