As the City Council speaker, Gifford Miller, defends the $1.6 million mass mailing he sent out before the budget, council members have begun sending out a batch of post-budget mailings, which are hitting mailboxes this week.

The brochures and fliers that Mr. Miller sent out in early June came just before a blackout period precluding candidates from using their government offices to pay for such mailings in the 90 days leading up to an election. Mr. Miller, a Democrat running for mayor, is not participating in the latest mailings.

His council spokesman, Stephen Sigmund, said yesterday that Mr. Miller decided that opting out “was the best thing to do and that he had never intended to send out a post budget mailing given that it was his last budget as speaker.” Yet some speculated yesterday that he did not want to subject himself to further criticism after a week of negative news stories and attacks by editorial boards.

“He had little choice but to opt out, given the public criticism he’s received,” the president of the Citizens Union, Dick Dadey, said. “He wanted to present himself as rising above the fray, given the flak that he has received. There was really little for him to gain.”

Mr. Sigmund said he did not know how many individual council members participated in the post-budget mailings, but historically, they have been popular. The mailing is an exception to the blackout period. Under the Charter, members are allowed to send out one piece of mail to their constituents no later than 21 days after the budget is adopted.

It was unclear yesterday whether the mailings were paid for by the council’s central office or the council members’ individual budgets.

Mr. Miller’s office originally said that the pre-budget mailings cost $37,000 and that they went to “more than 100,000” residents. It revised that number last week. Since then, colleagues, watchdog groups, and political rivals have piled on to criticize the speaker’s mailing as too massive and too self-serving.

“They were so different from what constituents were used to seeing as constituents and not voters,” Mr. Dadey said. “And the more you dig, the more it appears it was a shell game.”

Council Member David Yassky, a Democrat of Brooklyn, is not participating in the post-budget mailing, but said he did not have a problem with it.

“My guess is that what people will be mailing out in the next few days or whenever they go out would be closer to an ordinary newsletter,” Mr. Yassky said.