Belfast councillors had more than £4,500 deducted from their wages over the past four years due to overspends on their mobile phone bills.
It emerges following a high-profile standards watchdog probe involving a former councillor whose pay was docked for exceeding her mobile phone data limit.
Jolene Bunting was banned from becoming a councillor again for three years after it was found she doctored a council payslip to claim cash from a far-right group.
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Britain First sent her money after she allegedly told them she had been "fined" by Belfast City Council over a "stunt" involving the party's ex-deputy leader Jayda Fransen sitting in the lord mayor's chair.
But a watchdog hearing was told a £545 deduction in Ms Bunting's pay in June 2018 was actually because she had exceeded her phone data allowance.
Britain First leader Paul Golding, who complained to the local government watchdog, claimed Ms Bunting sent him a payslip which had been "doctored" to remove text referencing her phone bill.
An Assistant Commissioner said Ms Bunting had "improperly used her position to secure financial advantage".
It later emerged in a watchdog report on the case that between September 2017 and October 2018, Ms Bunting had £2,561 deducted from her monthly allowance for phone repayments.
The overspend reached a point where a council official contacted Ms Bunting to work out a payment plan to spread the cost over a number of months.
A cap was also placed on her contract to limit her data usage but less than two months later she requested its removal, according to the staff member.
Ms Bunting was elected in 2014 as a TUV candidate but left the party in 2017 and continued at city hall as an independent until she lost her seat in 2019.
A total of £4,592.18 was deducted from Belfast councillors' pay between May 2019 and January this year due to mobile phone bill overspends, according to a Freedom of Information response to Belfast Live.
Belfast City Council declined to give a breakdown of which councillors had their wages reduced, saying this was "personal data".
Councillors at the local authority receive a basic annual pay of around £16,000.
Ms Bunting did not attend the watchdog hearing in February but in earlier interviews with investigators rejected Mr Golding's allegations and denied doctoring her payslip.
In a lengthy statement issued after the proceedings, she described it as a "vexatious case".
Last month the former councillor failed in a High Court bid to have her three-year disqualification from seeking re-election quashed.
She claimed the sanction had been unfairly imposed following a watchdog hearing where she feared the prospect of cross-examining Mr Golding without having legal representation.
But a judge ruled that her request for an adjournment was reasonably denied at a hearing where appropriate safeguards were available.
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