City Council members running for citywide office are allocating “member item” money to organizations miles away from their council districts, a New York Sun analysis has found.

The disclosure is reinforcing concerns that the taxpayer funds are being used to buy political support. It is also undercutting one of the most commonly made defenses of member items in the city’s budget, which is that no one knows a district’s needs better than the local representative.

The disclosure that council members are attaching their names to money sent to organizations miles from their constituents’ homes, in boroughs they don’t represent, is the latest angle in the “slush fund” scandal that began with the news that the City Council was budgeting money for made-up, nonexistent organizations as a way of stashing funds away to be allocated at the discretion of individual council members. After federal indictments of council aides, all four metropolitan daily newspapers in the city have come out with editorials calling for abolishing the grants of taxpayer funds at the sole discretion of individual council members.

The out-of-district grants are raising concern from council members and advocacy groups, who say it’s another sign that the member item system needs to be overhauled or ended completely.

“Why would you give your small discretionary funds to groups outside your district unless you are trying to curry favor for future elections or political purposes?” a council member of Queens who is running for mayor, Tony Avella, said. “It’s not like we get enough money as it is.”

For council members running for higher office, earmarking money for groups outside a council district is a way to raise their profile, win political support from New Yorkers for a citywide campaign, and tap valuable fund-raising networks that might otherwise be out of their reach. Donating to a nonprofit in Manhattan or Queens, if you are a council member from Brooklyn, could lead to campaign donations from board members or supporters of the group and, at the very least, provide an excuse to orchestrate a photo-op in a part of the city where a council member may have no other connection.

One member whose name appears frequently in the city’s budget beside organizations outside of his district is David Weprin, a council member of Queens who is running for comptroller and is chairman of the council’s finance committee.

In addition to securing funds for groups within his district and borough, last year Mr. Weprin co-sponsored a $75,000 payment to the Southern Brooklyn Community Organization and signed on to another $40,000 for the Joyce Theater Foundation in Manhattan to be used for marketing and outreach to “contribute to the socioeconomic and cultural vitality of Chelsea,” according to the portion of the budget that includes council spending, known as Schedule C.

Mr. Weprin, along with another council member, sent $5,000 to the Jewish Community Council of Canarsie, Inc., in Brooklyn, for its general operating expenses, and he was the only council member from outside of Manhattan to co-sponsor a $280,000 payment to the Borough of Manhattan Community College for its early childcare education center and the Tribeca Film Festival. He also co-sponsored $225,000 for the Boro Park Jewish Community Council in Brooklyn, along with three Brooklyn council members.

There are other examples in addition to Mr. Weprin. A council member of Brooklyn who is running for comptroller, David Yassky, co-sponsored a $25,000 payment to Alianza Dominicana, a Dominican cultural center in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. A council member of Queens who is expected to run for public advocate, Eric Gioia, set aside $1,000 for the Italian American Museum in Manhattan, according to the council’s budget.

A council member of Queens who is expected to run for citywide office next year, John Liu, directed $10,000 to Elders Share the Arts to provide funding support for the Brooklyn group’s intergenerational theater program, the budget says.

A council member of Brooklyn who is a likely candidate for comptroller, Simcha Felder, allocated $3,500 to the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services, Inc., to help clinic social work staff treating adults and children in Manhattan’s Washington Heights, according to the budget. An aide to Mr. Felder, however, said there was a typo in the budget and that the money went to a street fair in Boro Park, a Brooklyn neighborhood in Mr. Felder’s district.

The executive director of Citizens Union, Richard Dadey, said it is inappropriate for council members to support or be associated with the awarding of member items to groups located outside of their borough because it could be interpreted as an attempt to curry favor with those outside of the district.

He said an exception might arise if an important constituency from within a district frequented an organization that provided citywide services, but said there should be evidence “of such a need being met” in those select cases.

Mr. Weprin said in a statement that although he represents a district in Queens, he is chair of a committee “that is citywide in nature.”

“As such, I accept meetings by organizations that are in need of public support irrespective of the district or borough in which they are located. Additionally, the association of my name with the names of these groups reflects my support of their requests for Council funding generally, and are not necessarily member items of my own,” he said.

The public funding doled out by the council each year has become a contentious subject in recent weeks at City Hall, with council members fiercely defending a system that allows them to spend millions of dollars as they wish each year, while the U.S. attorney’s office and the Department of Investigation probe the council’s spending.

The speaker of the City Council, Christine Quinn, told New York magazine: “The truth is, there’s a lot of politics in member items. There’s also some historical need for them,” She said that she’s not sure it would “be good policy” to get rid of them.

Rep. Anthony Weiner, a Democrat and a likely mayoral opponent of Ms. Quinn, has called for an end to all member items.

Council members have dodged questions about directing taxpayer funding to organizations staffed by relatives, prompting a council member of Queens, Peter Vallone Jr., to draft a bill that would make it illegal for a member to earmark public funding for an organization that employs a family member.

The politics in member items can vary from basic promotion of a member to the building of internal alliances within the council. By co-sponsoring money for a theater in Ms. Quinn’s district, Mr. Weprin may have been returning a favor to the speaker or trying to strengthen their relationship as she heads into the mayor’s race and he campaigns for comptroller. The council money is split unevenly among members and is a way for the speaker to reward favored members and punish others.

The executive director of Common Cause New York, Susan Lerner, said yesterday that member items should cease to exist in the council, noting that non-profit organizations tell her that the system functions “as an incumbent insurance policy.”

If a council member secures funding for a local group, officials from that organization are going to be less likely to support a political challenger because they don’t want to lose the funding provided by a council member.

“I’m afraid I don’t buy the argument that only council members can identify smaller groups to give money to,” she said. “It really does function as a honey pot.”