More reason to dump boro prez position

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz directed nearly $700,000 in city contracts to a nonprofit he controls - sometimes in amounts just small enough to avoid public scrutiny.

From 2004 through June 2008, Markowitz doled out $680,496 in taxpayer dollars to his organization, Best of Brooklyn Inc., without competitive bidding or approval from other city agencies or boards.

Among the 18 no-bid contracts were four issued for exactly $24,999 on the same day in 2005.

At the time, city law required contracts worth $25,000 or more to be filed and reviewed by the city controller while smaller contracts got largely no scrutiny.

If the contracts were really a $99,996 contract broken into four parts to avoid public scrutiny, it would violate the law, city Controller William Thompson said.

The group gets about half of its roughly $1 million budget from private donors. The rest comes from the city and state, including money from Markowitz and others.

Marty Markowitz steers big bucks to nonprofit without city scrutiny