Gov. Paterson’s freeze on hiring and promotions in the midst of the state fiscal crisis did not stop some 32,000 state workers from getting raises, The Post has learned.

The pay hikes, which cost the state about $55 million a year, came after Paterson imposed the Aug. 1 freeze.

The raises, some reaching 50 percent or more, were given to employees who kept the same titles, according to a database of salary hikes between Aug. 1, 2008, and March 31, 2009, prepared by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office for The Post.

The bumps came as the result of union contracts, arcane civil-service requirements or the whim of bosses.

Many employees also got a 3 percent hike on April 1, an increase Paterson had asked unions to give up because of the budget crisis. The unions refused, and the administration has said it will cut the work force by 8,700.

Paterson’s freeze did not affect the Legislature, where some 1,550 Assembly and Senate staffers, who are non-union, got raises.

The Legislature should have thought twice about the raises in the current climate, said Lise Bang-Jensen, a senior policy analyst with the Empire Center for New York State Policy.

“The people who pay these salaries — the taxpayers — many of them are out of work themselves. That makes it really difficult to justify,” she said,

About 750 employees who work directly for the Assembly got a 3 percent raise in January, an increase needed so salaries stay competitive, said Dan Weiller, a spokesman for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan).

He said these workers didn’t get a raise in 2008. But dozens of staffers who work directly for lawmakers got pay hikes in 2008 at the discretion of their bosses.

Some Democratic Senate staffers — including an associate analyst whose pay jumped 70 percent, to $80,000 — got a financial boost after majority control switched in January for the first time since 1965.

Austin Shafran, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith (D-Queens), said the Senate had trimmed 200 jobs and that pay raises were justified because of increased responsibilities. Some Republican staffers got pay cuts or lost their jobs.

After Aug. 1, any state agency that wanted to hire or promote had to justify the move as essential.

But the raises for some workers were processed before the freeze, including one for a legislative coordinator in the Health Department, whose 26 percent hike brought her salary to $100,000. The department said her job had changed to include a supervisory role with more responsibility.

Managers and other non-union workers did not get an April 1 raise of 3 percent after Paterson took the “unprecedented” step of eliminating the hike, said spokeswoman Marissa Shorenstein.

The Post reported in February that Paterson gave raises to more than a dozen of his staffers and that the chief of staff to Paterson’s wife got a December raise. The administration defended the hikes, saying the workers had new positions or new duties.

Source: NY Post