More on those discretionary funds:

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.”

See also: “Longtime Practice of City Council Financing Lands on Speaker’s Shoulders” (NYT, May 11, 2008).