When the state Assembly complied with a state judge’s order and disclosed details of its pork barrel projects, the deepest gasps of surprise didn’t come from budget watchdog groups and concerned citizens, but from lawmakers themselves.

Although no lawmaker was naïve enough to have assumed that the funds, which are known in Albany as “member items,” were distributed equitably among members of the majority conference, few had an inkling of the magnitude of the share controlled by the Assembly’s longtime speaker, Sheldon Silver.

Late last week it emerged that Mr. Silver has given out more than $7 million of the roughly $50 million in member item projects earmarked by the Assembly in this year’s budget. Mr. Silver’s share of the pie is in many cases 100 times larger than that of other Democratic lawmakers and dwarfs the portions of even the most veteran lawmakers in the conference.

For a number of Democratic lawmakers in the Assembly, the disclosure of the disparity between Mr. Silver’s largesse and theirs has provided them with an awareness of their relative insignificance and a bitter lesson of how power is distributed in Albany.

Mindful of the consequences that could result by voicing disapproval, no one in the Assembly has yet to publicly complain about the size of Mr. Silver’s slice. Privately, Democratic members of the Assembly are venting their unhappiness with the speaker.

“He’s running around with millions,” an assembly member who spoke to The New York Sun on condition of anonymity said. “It’s pretty extraordinary. We didn’t know what he got, we had no idea what everybody got.”

Each year, the Assembly and the Senate set aside $85 million in tax funds to pay for the projects. In October, a state judge ordered both houses to detail how the money is distributed and spent. During the budget process, the leaders of each house — Mr. Silver in the Assembly and Joseph Bruno in the Republican-controlled Senate — divide up the pot of money among members, who come up with lists of pet projects for their districts.

The lawmaker who spoke to the Sun said Mr. Silver refuses to hear a request for more money from members of his conference unless it is delivered in person. “Shelly is very adamant: Everybody comes to him. You don’t just put out a memo; you go in and ask him. … He wants them to beg and plead for every little thing.”

Occasionally, Mr. Silver grants a wish, the lawmaker said: “He makes a big deal about presenting it to you. More often than not, it’s less than you asked for or nothing that you asked for.”

Lawmakers interviewed by the Sun said Mr. Silver’s slow-drip process for apportioning the member items is a key part of his ability to hold onto power. Lawmakers who show allegiance to Mr. Silver are rewarded with more money to give to their constituents. For a number of lawmakers, their share of the member item pot is the one part of the budget for which they are responsible. “When people talk about this being used as a mechanism of control, that’s what they are talking about,” another member of the Assembly said.

Some veteran legislators, including those who have served in the Assembly for more than two decades, have seen their slice of the pie increase gradually over the years. Seniority helps only so much. One Democratic lawmaker, Alexander “Pete” Grannis, who was first elected to the Assembly in 1974, doled out this year about $270,000, which is about five times more than many of the more junior members receive but represents only about 3.5% of the money sponsored by Mr. Silver.

Mr. Silver doled out almost five times Mr. Grannis’s share to a single organization, the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, a social service organization led byWilliam Rapfogel, who is the husband of Mr. Silver’s chief of staff, Judy Rapfogel.

The money given away by Mr. Silver consists mostly of grants to Jewish and Chinese-American organizations that serve recent immigrants, the elderly, and the poor. Mr. Silver’s Lower East Side constituency is heavily represented by Chinese and Jewish residents.

Lawmakers interviewed said the discontent over the distribution of member items is not nearly enough to stir a rebellion among Democrats. “I don’t sense a tremendous clamor that the speaker is misusing his ability to provide member items,” a Democrat who represents a district in Westchester, Adam Bradley, said. “I don’t think New York is different from other states.

At an Assembly retreat held at the Embassy Suites Hotel in New York City last week, Mr. Silver warned members that press articles about the contents of member items were about to appear in newspapers and that they were going to highlight the disparity. Mr. Silver said the dollar figure that was being reported was incorrect because it included projects sponsored and pushed by other members but that were listed under his name.