Council Members 'Vent' About Mayor's Use of Funds

Mayor Bloomberg is coming under fire from the members of the City Council, who are criticizing his distribution of taxpayer dollars just as the council is facing heightened scrutiny for its own allocation of public funds to local organizations.

During a more than 90-minute closed-door meeting yesterday, council members held what one member described as a "venting session" that focused on the executive branch's allocation of public funds and awarding of noncompetitive contracts, a move that seems designed to deflect negative attention from the council.

"There's a fair amount of concern about the lack of transparency and accountability," a council member of Queens, John Liu, said. "The stuff that's happening on the council side is actually peanuts compared to discretionary spending on the executive side."

He said council members were not feeling defensive about the scrutiny several have received in recent weeks over the nonprofits they have helped secured funding for in the city's budget, but are "just happy that we are now starting to address the overall issue and not focusing only on ourselves, which is only a piece."

A council member who represents parts of Brooklyn, David Yassky, said "a lot of council members feel that no-bid contracts given out by the mayoral agencies deserve as much scrutiny as the discretionary grants" handed out by the council.

The state comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli, announced in January that he would audit the city Department of Education's increasingly common practice of awarding noncompetitive contracts, which have totaled more than $270 million since 2002.

A spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg declined to comment.

The council is under investigation by the U.S. attorney's office and the Department of Investigation, which are looking into its finances and a longstanding practice of stashing money behind fake groups in the budget to create a slush fund that could be doled out later in the year to community organizations.

Two council aides have been indicted on charges that they embezzled about $145,000 from a city-funded group that was supposed to be educating children. Some of the money the group received had been channeled through two fictitious organizations.