A state employee who was involved in a romantic relationship with Speaker of the House Tim Moore saw her salary increase 50% during the three year affair.

The raises have garnered attention from political observers who have speculated on whether the increases were related to the relationship.

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Those salaries were decided by a committee of Superior Court clerks around the state, not by the legislature. Conference president J. Yancey Washington, who has been on that committee since 2016 and an officer since 2018, said Moore had nothing to do with the raises.

Washington said he didn’t even know that Jamie Liles Lassiter, executive director for the NC Conference of Clerks, had a relationship with the speaker, which was publicly revealed this month as part in a lawsuit filed by her husband, Scott Lassiter.

“Her raises were based upon performance and achievement during her tenure,” Washington said.

Jamie Lassiter also said conference members would not have known about her relationship with the speaker.

"I do an annual review like any state employee," Lassiter said.

Other recent past presidents of the conference didn’t immediately return messages seeking comment.

Scott Lassiter said he discovered the relationship in December, and he alleged that it broke his marriage. He said in the lawsuit that Jamie Lassiter feared reprisals against the conference if she ended the relationship with Moore. Jamie Lassiter has denied that and said the only person who ever threatened her career was her "soon-to-be ex-husband."

Jamie Lassiter started as the conference’s director in 2016 -- three years before the relationship that Moore said began in 2019. Moore has described the relationship as "sporadic."

Scott Lassiter’s lawsuit also pegs 2019 as the affair’s beginning.

In July of that year, Jamie Lassiter’s salary was $80,773, state records show. It has grown since then to $122,707, a 52% increase in less than four years.

The raises are well above what rank-and-file state employees received during that period, though they’re not out-of-line with raises Jamie Lassiter got in this job before her relationship with Moore began.

On average, state employees saw their pay increase by less than 15% from 2018 to 2022, according to the Office of State Human Resources.

In 2016, Jamie Lassiter's job paid less than $64,000 a year. By 2018 she was making nearly $79,000 — almost a 25% increase over two years.

According to the conference’s bylaws, the group’s executive committee sets the director’s salary. Washington said Moore never meddled in the process and that there wasn’t any thought that: If the conference treated the speaker’s girlfriend well, the legislature would treat the conference well.

Moore, R-Cleveland, has said repeatedly that he didn't use his power as speaker to impact his relationship with Jamie Lassiter or any other relationship.

"Not in any way at all," he told reporters last week.

Moore declined to discuss Lassiter’s raises specifically, referring questions about her salary to the conference.

There have been questions before about Moore’s love life tangling in his political one.

In 2017, Moore’s ex-fiancée was the only person considered for a pair of state jobs after the speaker forwarded her resume — and only her resume — to the state’s Department of Insurance.

One of those jobs had been created by the General Assembly that same year as part of a state budget process that Moore would have been heavily involved in.

When WRAL News asked about the matter at the time, Moore acknowledged backing her hire and said he did so because she was a talented attorney suited for the job.

Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey told WRAL News in 2018 that he felt no pressure from Moore to hire the woman and said she did "an amazing job."

State government editor Jack Hagel contributed to this report.