More members of the City Council distanced themselves this weekend from a mass mailing sent to voters by the speaker of the council, Gifford Miller, at a cost to the city of $1.6 million.

And, at least one council member, Letitia James, said she received a letter this weekend from the city’s Campaign Finance Board, asking whether the fliers and brochures the speaker sent in her district were postmarked before a blackout period barring candidates from using a government office to pay for mailings in the 90 days leading up to an election.

Officials in Mr. Miller’s office disclosed Thursday that the cost of the pre-budget mailings was more than the $37,000 they had cited last month as the price. The printing of the 5.8 million fliers and brochures was broken into 150 smaller jobs, avoiding competitive bidding requirements.

In the days since that disclosure, Mr. Miller, a Democrat who is competing for the party’s nomination to challenge Mayor Bloomberg in November’s election, has come under intense fire from government watchdog groups and colleagues who have questioned whether he abused his office to boost his name recognition prior to the September 13 primary.

Now, several council members are also expressing concern about why they were not given more information about literature that prominently featured campaign-style photos of Mr. Miller paired with their pictures and names. They said they were never told what the mailings would look like or that they would heavily blanket the entire city.

Ms. James told The New York Sun yesterday that she received a letter from the Campaign Finance Board on Saturday saying that some constituents in her district did not receive the mailings until June 28, more than 10 days after final government mailings had to be postmarked under the 90-day blackout rule. The board, she said, has given her office until July 25 to respond to its query. A previous complaint filed by one of Mr. Miller’s rivals in the Democratic mayoral race, C. Virginia Fields, was already dismissed by the board, which said it did not have the authority to investigate.

A spokesman for the board, Tanya Domi, would not confirm an investigation. But the letter is an indication the board may have reopened the case. “We take note of press reports and we read the newspapers just like everyone else does,” Ms. Domi said yesterday.

Ms. James said she “had an initial conversation” with the speaker’s office about the mailings. She said, however, that her final approval hinged on the speaker’s position on the Atlantic Yards development project in her district, which she adamantly opposes.

“It was a conditional approval,” Ms. James said yesterday during a phone interview. “The condition was that we would have discussions about the Atlantic Yards project.”

Mr. Miller announced his support of the Atlantic Yards project, which includes a new basketball arena for the New Jersey Nets, without contacting her, she said. Since the mailings went out, she said 20 to 30 constituents have asked her why she endorsed someone who favors the project.

“There was an appearance that I had endorsed the Speaker Miller for mayor when I had not,” Ms. James said. “I felt betrayed.”

A spokesman for Mr. Miller, Stephen Sigmund, said yesterday that all of the mailings were sent out before the blackout period. He has said that the revised cost was due to a “miscommunication,” but maintains that there was nothing wrong with the mailings and said council members who were asked to participate were given a chance to view a draft version.

“These mailings were an appropriate way to help get a strong budget for New Yorkers and they were approved with over 40 council members the same way they scores of council mailings have been approved in the past,” Mr. Sigmund said in an e-mail.

Council Member Lewis Fidler, also a Democrat of Brooklyn, said yesterday that he was approached in the hallway of City Hall by someone on Mr. Miller’s staff and that during a “very quick conversation” agreed to participate in an education mailing. He said, however, that he told the aide he wanted to see a proof of the brochure before it was printed.

That, according to Mr. Fidler, who has endorsed one of Mr. Miller’s Democratic rivals, Fernando Ferrer, never happened. Instead, the taxpayer-funded mailing, along with three others, went out in his district, costing nearly $93,000.

“I never heard anything about it until it arrived in my mailbox at home,” Mr. Fidler said.

Council Member Charles Barron, who frequently disagrees with Mr. Miller, said he approved the mailing, but was never told how elaborate it would be.

“They should have explained that this was something different,” Mr. Barron said. “They caught us all moving fast and I think Gifford took advantage of that.”

Two other Council Members, Eva Moskowitz and Simcha Felder, criticized the mailing on Thursday.

The mailings came in five varieties. Four were small fliers outlining efforts to fight Mr. Bloomberg’s proposed budget cuts to city services ranging from day care to libraries. The fifth was a glossy, color brochure about Mr. Miller’s proposal to reduce the number of students in public school classes.

Critics have also raised questions about why the council divided the project into smaller jobs, with each costing less than $5,000. Printing jobs valued at more than that amount must be awarded to bidders solicited through a formal request-for-proposals process. City procurement rules say that work “shall not be artificially divided” to avoid that process.