A candidate for City Council in the Bronx asked the Campaign Finance Board yesterday to hold the incumbent he is running against, Oliver Koppell, financially responsible for his portion of a recent $1.6 million council mailing.

The candidate, Ari Hoffnung, 31, called on the board to count the four mailings that went out in Mr. Koppell’s Riverdale district, which featured pictures of Mr. Koppell next to the council speaker, Gifford Miller, against the $150,000 spending cap set for the race.

In his letter to the board, Mr. Hoffnung said Mr. Koppell “derived an unfair benefit” from the mailing, which went out the week before a three-month blackout period that bars candidates from using government offices to pay for mass mail.

Mr. Miller, a Democrat running for mayor, has come under fire for the mailings, partly because a council spokesman initially estimated the cost of the work as $37,000. But yesterday’s complaint was the first filed against another member.

Mr. Koppell defended himself, saying the mailings were perfectly appropriate.

“The mailings were all done 90 days prior to the primary,” the former state assemblyman and attorney general said. “My answer is that it was appropriate, it was proper, and it was done more than 90 days before the election.”

Several other council members have distanced themselves from Mr. Miller’s mailings, which they have said are too campaign-like. Watchdogs have also questioned the way the speaker’s staff broke the mailings into more than 150 separate jobs, forgoing a formal bidding process.

A spokeswoman for the Campaign Finance Board, Tanya Domi, said the board would review the Hoffnung complaint. Earlier this month it dismissed a complaint about mailings filed by the campaign of another mayoral candidate, C. Virginia Fields.