It pays to be friends with Christine Quinn.
The powerful City Council speaker and leading mayoral contender rewards her pals on the council with additional staff paid for out of the council’s central budget.
The practice, which has gone on throughout Quinn’s tenure as speaker, frees those select members to hire extra staffers, buy additional office supplies or pay existing staffers higher wages.
Currently, four members have an extra employee courtesy of the central budget, although all 51 members are supposed to get the same amount for personnel and office costs. Those who chair committees are allocated slightly more.
Harlem Democrat Inez Dickens, a candidate for speaker next year and a close ally of Quinn, has a legislative assistant who makes $56,000.
Dickens has long been close to Quinn, providing her a reliable vote on legislation and sitting on the council’s leadership team.
Earlier this year, Dickens endorsed Quinn for mayor, even as Harlem’s political king, Rep. Charles Rangel, threw his support behind Bill Thompson.
Quinn was careful to avoid criticizing Dickens after The Post recently exposed her massive debt to the city. As a landlord, Dickens owes $265,000 for a host of building violations.
Quinn also gives her own district office a legislative assistant who makes $40,309. Her district-office budget is separate from the council’s central bank account, which funds this staffer.
In addition, Brooklyn Democrats Lew Fidler and David Greenfield each have one additional staff member paid for by Quinn.
Fidler, who has endorsed Thompson, had once been much closer to Quinn.
Greenfield inherited the employee from his predecessor, Simcha Felder, who was also a Quinn ally. He has yet to make an endorsement.
When asked why some members get extra staff, Quinn’s spokesman Jamie McShane would say only, “Central staff gets assigned, as circumstances warrant, for any variety of reasons, including the legislative portfolio of the member and volume of constituent-services work in the member’s office.”
Members who are not lucky enough to get the perk have long grumbled about it.
“To me, it’s the most egregious because it’s done under the table,” one said. “This is totally raw politics.”