After a $15 million deal earlier this year to boost the salaries of New Jersey's judges, prosecutors and top political appointees, lawmakers without fanfare added millions more into the budget to boost pay for aides in their district offices.

Since 2002, each legislator has had at least $110,000 to use for paying staff in their local offices. Now, that has jumped to $135,000 in the Assembly, which allows for pay increases however each lawmaker sees fit.

Senators will also get more money for their staffers, although a spokesman for the Senate Democrats declined to say how much.

Representatives for Senate President Stephen Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, both Democrats, confirmed the increases in separate statements and described them as much-needed disbursements that will help lawmakers recruit and retain talented staff and better serve the public.

District office staffers perform a wide variety of functions, from answering phone calls and helping residents navigate state agencies to meeting with constituents and shaping legislation.

But the increases, which come from set-asides in the budget totaling $10 million, are now drawing criticism for having been approved with little public scrutiny. Attention in Trenton at the time was focused on a clash between Democrats in the Legislature and Gov. Phil Murphy over which taxes to raise to balance the budget. The fight nearly led to a government shutdown.

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“Whether or not it’s justified, allocating $10 million behind closed doors for such a controversial purpose comes off as deliberately evasive,” said Assemblywoman Amy Handlin, R-Monmouth.

A spokesman for Murphy, a Democrat, did not respond to a request for comment.

The amount allocated for staff salaries for each lawmaker is not written into law. Rather, it is set at the discretion of the Senate president and Assembly speaker, who authorized the increases for the fiscal year that began June 30.

Language in the $37.4 billion budget that Murphy signed July 1 appropriated $5 million each for “operations” in the Senate and Assembly. The money came out of the state’s surplus fund, according to sources in the Legislature.

In the Assembly, $2 million will be distributed to the chamber’s 80 members this year and the remaining $3 million will be saved to help provide an equal level of funding in future years, according to a legislative source.

As for the Senate’s $5 million, the entire amount is expected to be used this year, but not all of it will go toward salaries for legislative aides, according to the Senate Democratic office. The Senate has 40 members.

Richard McGrath, a spokesman for Sweeney, said money has been used to provide a badly needed increase for district offices, which are run by "hardworking people who are devoted to public service." For many offices, this is the first increase in 16 years.

“These offices have staffs of as many as four or five people who are responsible for legislation, constituent services, administrative support, community outreach and the myriad of functions that respond to the needs of the residents in each district,” McGrath said, adding about Sweeney: "He believes the increase is needed by the local district offices to best serve the legislators’ constituents.”

Coughlin, through a spokeswoman, made a similar argument.

“The speaker felt having the allocation placed in the state budget was very important, because members can use the funds to attract and retain the talented professionals needed to staff their district offices in order to better serve constituents,” Liza Acevedo, the spokeswoman, said in a statement.

Handlin, however, said the way the money was approved sends the wrong message to taxpayers.

“Since this will be my last term in the Legislature, I look at it as an ordinary taxpayer and ask, ‘What else are they putting on my tab without telling me? Why give them more and more of my money when I’m the last one to know how it’s spent?’ ” Handlin said.

Lawmakers have tried at least once before to secure extra money for their aides. In 2016, former Gov. Chris Christie and top Democrats struck a deal to allow Christie to profit off a book while in office in exchange for hefty raises for Cabinet officials, state judges and others.

Legislative aides were among those who would have benefited. The legislation proposed writing into statute that each lawmaker receive at least $140,000 for “member staff services.”

The deal was eventually scrapped, however, amid a backlash from the public and rank-and-file lawmakers.

Soon after Murphy took office earlier this year, the Legislature approved — and the governor later signed — many of those same salary increases. The $15 million measure gave raises to members of Murphy's Cabinet, state justices, Superior Court judges and county prosecutors, but it was criticized by some lawmakers for enriching the state’s highest-paid employees while leaving the salaries of lower-level state employees, including legislative aides, unchanged.

State Sen. Ronald Rice, D-Essex, for example, said at the time that his district office staff deserved a raise for "working their butts off, seven days a week,” according to an NJ Advance Media report.

"I am not against judges, but someone should say we have got to do something for the staff people first," Rice said in April.

A couple months later, two resolutions introduced by Democrats and included in Murphy’s first budget secured the $10 million to be used at the discretion of Sweeney and Coughlin.

Email: pugliese@northjersey.com