Mayor provides cash for culture

Nobody could have been more pleased than Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, when a mysterious benefactor came forward in December to donate $10m (£7m) for distribution to cultural organisations in the city left penniless by the September 11 attacks. Faced with a civil emergency and the city's $4.8bn deficit, they are precisely the groups he had targeted for budget cutbacks.

Five months later, the identity of the anonymous philanthropist has finally emerged. And in what is either an act of historic generosity or one of the most spectacularly devious public relations stunts in years, it turns out to be Michael Bloomberg himself.

The millionaire mayor and media tycoon refuses to discuss personal donations, his communications director Bill Cunningham said yesterday. And the Carnegie Corporation, which served as a clearing-house for the windfall, never reveals the origins of anonymous gifts. But neither were denying information provided to the New York Post yesterday by sources in the city government that the $10m came from Mr Bloomberg, who gave away $100m of his personal fortune last year.

Deliberately leaked or not, the news comes at a helpful juncture for Mr Bloomberg. Only this week, he was under fire for having refused to allow the renowned City Museum of New York to move into new premises at the refurbished Tweed Courthouse building in downtown Manhattan, as his predecessor Rudolph Giuliani had promised. Now, with convenient timing, it emerges that his gift included a $100,000 donation to the museum.

In October, before Mr Bloomberg took office, Mr Giuliani forced many cultural organisations to slash their budgets and reduce their hours. Mr Bloomberg did not restore their budgets - indeed, he is proposing a new $19m cut to the city's cultural affairs department - but in his private life he acted as anti-mayor, writing personal cheques instead.