Gov. Kathy Hochul has signed legislation granting state lawmakers a pay raise from $110,000 to $142,000 per year that will make them the highest paid legislators in the nation.

“I believe that legislators need to be compensated for the hard work that they do. People don’t realize the sacrifice that they make being away from their families,” Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) said ahead of a special session held last week where legislators approved the salary increase.

Signing the legislation bought Hochul some goodwill among members of the state Senate and Assembly on the eve of her inauguration as the first female governor to ever win a full, four-year term in office.

Not a single Republican in either chamber voted for the pay increase sponsored by Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) and state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers).

State lawmakers, though, will have to accept some limits on outside income that will effectively amount to $35,000 per year alongside the $32,000 pay boost that will become effective at the beginning of 2023, according to the legislative language.

Hochul is duking it out with lefty members of the state Senate over her nomination of Hector LaSalle to become chief judge of the Court of Appeals. Critics point to a handful of cases LaSalle heard while serving on the state Supreme Court Appellate Division’s Second Department in Brooklyn while arguing he would make the state’s highest court too conservative for years to come.

LaSalle’s supporters counter that he simply values the rule of law over ideology.

Hochul had played coy for more than a week about whether she would sign the pay raise bill following a special session last week called by Stewart-Cousins and Heastie.

“I have many bills on my desk … so I will address that in proper time,” Hochul said Dec. 23 — two weeks after saying a salary increase was fine by her if legislators approved limits on outside income as well.

Critics to her political right have lamented how she didn’t similarly bless a special session in recent months to address purported issues with controversial criminal justice reforms that Republicans and some Democrats blame for rising crime.

“If @GovKathyHochul had any political courage, she would not only veto the ridiculous $32,000 pay raise, she would have called us back for a special session to deal with the disastrous cashless bail,” Assemblyman Michael Lawler (R-Rockland), who was elected to Congress in November, tweeted last week.

“Instead, it’s business as usual in Albany.”