At a time when private-sector employees’ wages are forecast to remain stagnant, legislators, judges and other top state government officials won’t have that problem.

Their salaries will grow by nearly 2.2 percent.

For legislators, the adjustment — based on the 12-month movement in the Consumer Price Index for urban consumers in the mid-Atlantic states — will raise their base salary to $83,802, starting Dec. 1.

That is up $1,776 from this year’s $82,026 base pay.

Legislative leaders — Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson County, and House Speaker Sam Smith, R-Jefferson — will see their pay reset at $130,820, up from $128,048.

Only one time in the 16 years since the automatic pay raise law took effect has the pay for state officials remained stagnant. That was in 2009, when the Consumer Price Index showed a slight deflation. The law provides no increase when that occurs.

In recent years, some lawmakers and other officials have made a practice of returning the raises to the state treasury or donating them to charity.

Gov. Tom Corbett and his Cabinet officers fall into that category.

The governor would be eligible for a $187,192 salary starting Jan. 1, but press secretary Kevin Harley said Corbett will continue to refuse the automatic pay raise, keeping his salary at $174,914. That is the salary assigned to the post when he was elected in 2010. He refused the raise he was due last year as well.

He also will continue to insist on his Cabinet officials receiving the 2010 salaries assigned to their posts, which range from $125,939 to $139,931, Harley said.

Eric Epstein, co-founder of government reform advocacy group Rock the Capital, thinks it is past time to repeal this law. He advocates pegging legislative raises to accountability and performance milestones or creating a nonpartisan commission to set pay.

“The average income for Pennsylvania families is on the decline,” he said. “The only thing that’s increasing for working families is the difficulty of making ends meet. I just don’t think the legislators are connected to the lives of average Pennsylvania residents.”

He noted that the raises are on top of pensions, free parking, generous health benefits and per diem allowances, among other perks.

Defenders of the raises say the increases are needed to keep state officials’ pay on pace with the inflation rate. They also argue that they are needed to attract qualified people to these top-level positions.

Still, the automatic raises have been a source of contention for years.

Their repeal has become an oft-cited campaign promise of candidates running for legislative office. But legislation introduced to freeze the raises or eliminate them and replace the 1995 law with a different method for determining raises has never gained traction.

Often, the state officials’ pay boost gets compared to the increase that the nearly 62 million Americans receiving Social Security and Supplemental Security Income benefits will get. For 2013, that increase is 1.7 percent.

Retired state employee Bill White of Carlisle said his Social Security increase should be the baseline used to compare what’s a fair increase and what isn’t.

“I would say anything above or below that is up for discussion. Retired state employees haven’t gotten an increase” since 2002, he said.

The raises also irk the thousands of nonunionized state managers, many of whom are not supervisors and often do work similar to that of unionized colleagues. They received a 1 percent raise in July, their first raise in four years that went beyond the increased co-pay for health benefits.

State workers covered by the Council 13 contract of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees received a 1 percent raise in July and will receive a 2.25 percent increment in April and a half-percent raise in July.

HOW MUCH DO THEY MAKE?

A 1995 law grants top state officials automatic annual pay raises tied to the 12-month change in the mid-Atlantic region’s Consumer Price Index since the previous November. The change this year is 2.165 percent. That sets 2013 salaries at these amounts for these positions: