Three years after Gov. Deval Patrick ordered Massport to tighten its belt, the agency’s skyrocketing payroll topped a staggering ?$100 million in 2013, blowing the roof off what officials expected to spend, thanks to a new round of well-paid hires and a bloated overtime tab, a Herald analysis of state data found.

Massport had originally projected an $87.9 million payroll for 2013, before overtime. But that number ballooned to $100.8 million by year’s end, according to updated payroll figures obtained by the Herald. That’s also a nearly $7 million jump from the $93.9 million the agency doled out in gross pay in 2012.

Massport’s escalating payroll come three years after Patrick called on the agency to clamp down on spending, saying at the time that officials there “need to align themselves more with the kinds of austerity that we’re seeing in state government.”

David Tuerck, of the conservative think tank Beacon Hill Institute, slammed Massport for a lack of accountability, saying, “This is further evidence of how quasi-government agencies have free range to spend as they wish and can pay exorbitant salaries and create new positions as they wish without having the constraints under which the private sector operates.”

“In the private sector you can’t just make new high-paid appointments and provide big salary increases without being accountable to stockholders,” Tuerck added. “But here is an agency that is only accountable to itself.”

On top of what spokesman Matthew Brelis said was a roughly ?$11 million tab for overtime — representing the bulk of the spike — the agency added 10 new hires, many of them big-money managers, including:

• Lisa Wieland, who is being moved into the new $178,000-a-year post of chief administrative officer in the maritime division, a $42,000 boost from her previous human relations post.

• A trio of $140,000 deputy director hires, including Beth Rubenstein in transportation and master planning, Eliza Tan as deputy director of management analysis and Ellen Herman as deputy director of strategic initiatives.

• Paula Van Gelder, brought on as deputy director of strategic communication/marketing, who is slated to make $135,000 next year.

• Gilad Fuxman, hired as the IT audit supervisor in internal audit, who is earning $100,000.

Brelis said most of the new hires filled vacancies that existed at the end of 2012, though he couldn’t say exactly how many there were. Any new positions, he said, were created as part of what he said was Massport’s “strategic plan to set a road map for the authority for the next 20 years.”

Brelis defended Massport’s practices, arguing that it froze rank-and-file pay for two years and manager salaries for three. Even with the additional hires, the agency’s 1,165-employee roster in 2013 still lags behind the 1,210 it carried in 2008, he said.

“This staffing dynamic occurred as the authority’s operating units face higher demand and operational tempo,” Brelis said, pointing to the record 30.2 million passengers to come through Logan International Airport last year. “Use of overtime is an efficient way to control spending. We need to maintain high levels of safety, security and fire department coverage and at our 24/7/365 facilities, overtime is frequently a more cost-effective way of meeting the seasonality of customer demands.”

James Stanton and Joe Dwinell contributed to this report.