The debate over Greg Schiano’s $32 million contract to return as Rutgers University’s football coach spilled into the Statehouse on Thursday.

The state Assembly’s higher education committee voted 6-3 to approve a bill that would appropriate $250,000 in taxpayer-funded state money to a special care treatment center at the state university’s dental school in New Brunswick.

But the three Republican members on the panel all voted against it — and some cited Schiano’s contract as the reason.

The measure (A5751) would allow the center to hire another dentist to help children and adults with special needs receive dental care.

Assemblyman Michael Patrick Caroll, R-Morris, said the program itself is worthy, but he had an issue approving money now that Rutgers has agreed to pay Schiano $32 million over the next eight years — $4 million a year — to come back to take over the school’s struggling football team.

“I have no objection whatsoever to spending money on dentists,” Caroll said before the vote in Trenton. “But if Rutgers has $20 million to spend on a football coach, we don’t have to give them any more.”

Assemblywoman Amy Handlin, R-Monmouth, agreed.

“I think it’s a fabulous program,” Handlin said. “I wish you the very best with it. But ... we all ought to be somewhat skeptical about requests for more and more and more money from a university that seems to be able to find millions of dollars to do everything but academics and these kinds of wonderful community services.”

Assemblywoman DiAnne Gove, R-Ocean, also voted no. All six Democrats on the committee voted yes.

The vote came a day after Rutgers introduced Schiano was as its new coach, eight years after he left the Garden State’s largest college to coach in the NFL. Schiano, a Wyckoff native, vowed to help rebuild the football program — which competes in the prestigious Big Ten conference — to benefit not just Rutgers but New Jersey as a whole.

But a major Rutgers faculty union is opposed to shelling out that much money for a football coach at a school partially funded New Jersey taxpayers.

David Hughes, treasurer of Rutgers’ AAUP-AFT, which represents 4,800 full-time faculty and graduate workers, said last week the school has devoted “a lot of money and a lot of time” to Schiano and suggested more attention should be paid to academics.

“There’s a certain disgrace about this moment,” Hughes said. “The athletics department continues to raid New Jersey families.”

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy suggested Wednesday that the school can invest in academics and athletics at the same time.

“The problem with that perspective is it implies this is ‘either/or.' It’s ‘and/both,’” Murphy said when asked about the faculty union’s concerns after Schiano’s news conference.

“You’re not a research and teaching university like Rutgers, which is among the very best in the country, without enormous resources," the governor added. "You’re not in the Big Ten without a resource commitment like that to compete at that level.”

Murphy also declined to say Wednesday how much taxpayer money would go into Schiano’s pay.

Rutgers athletics was subsidized with $15.2 million from the university’s general budget, $2.9 million in state funds, and $11.9 million in a student-fee subsidy, according to its most recent financial ledger.

A university spokesperson said “all of the funding required” for Schiano’s agreement will come from athletics revenue, including Big Ten revenues, ticket sales, philanthropy, media rights and merchandise sales.

Meanwhile, another union at Rutgers, one stuck in a contract dispute with the university, is also criticizing Schiano’s hiring.

The American Association of University Professors Biomedical and Health Sciences of New Jersey (AAUP-BHSNJ) represents 1,400 faculty members at the school.

Diomedes Tsitouras, the union’s executive director, said while his members have been working without a contract for 18 months, "and the football coach gets one with more money attached to it in matter of days."

“Really quite amazing,” Tsitouras told NJ Advance Media in an email.

Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @johnsb01.

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