As members of the New York City Council we were outraged to learn about the practice of allocating Council funds to fictitious organizations. Allowing this body to vote on false information made a mockery of the Council and the work that we are elected to perform on behalf of New Yorkers.

Following this discovery, press reports have correctly shined a critical light on the City Council budget allocations process. The Council’s budget system has been plagued by a lack of transparency and oversight for too long. Budget allocations intended to provide support to vital community based organizations are vulnerable to corruption and fraud.

We are calling for immediate and comprehensive reform of the Council’s budget practices. As elected officials charged with serving our communities, we are committed to ensuring that tax dollars go only toward bona fide local programs and non-profits that effectively address community needs. Many have called for the abolition of grants from individual Council members and the body as a whole to non-profit organizations.

Throwing the baby out with the bathwater would be a mistake. The fact is that the vast majority of City Council grants go to support services that otherwise would go overlooked or unmet by city government. The Council funds transportation for seniors, technology programs in schools, hotlines for at-risk youth, little leagues for neighborhood children, the list goes on.

In order to begin fixing the process and addressing the issues raised by these questionable grants, we are urging our colleagues in the Council to adopt a set of reforms that would open the Council budget process to the public and would include a rigorous independent analysis of funding recipients.

FY 2010 budget and beyond:

— In order to be eligible to receive any City Council funding for fiscal year 2010, we recommend that an organization be required to successfully complete an eligibility application process that would begin in the fall prior to the June budget.

— This eligibility application would consider elements such as an organization’s funding history, the percentage of the organization’s budget comprised of City Council funding, possible conflicts of interest between the organization and any member of the City Council, government inquiry or investigation history, and record of service provision.

— These eligibility applications would be evaluated by an independent body, designated by the Council, using a formally established and publicly available set of criteria. Only organizations deemed eligible by this body would be able to receive Council funding for the coming fiscal year.

— Eligibility applications would be made available in a publicly searchable database.

— Following the adoption of the budget in June, all organizations that received significant (a combined allocation greater than $10,000 or that comprises more than 50% of an organization’s annual budget) City Council funding would undergo a rigorous audit to ensure that funds are being spent according to their designated purpose.

FY 2009 budget:

— As the June budget is approaching quickly, we recognize that there may not be sufficient time to implement the proposed full-scale reform for the upcoming fiscal year. However, we would recommend that the Council (i) make fiscal year 2009 funding applications available to the public on a searchable database as quickly as possible and (ii) require that all organizations designated for funding by the Council for fiscal year 2009 complete a process equivalent to the pre-application evaluation described above, and that groups be required to pass this successfully prior to the registration of their fiscal year 2009 contract.

These recommendations have been shared with the speaker of the City Council, Christine Quinn, who we know shares our desire to implement budget reforms as soon as possible. Over the next several weeks we look forward to working with Ms. Quinn and our colleagues so that together the City Council can craft a budget process that restores public confidence and corrects the flawed system that led to the misuse and mishandling of public dollars in the first place.

Mr. de Blasio, Ms. Brewer, and Ms. Palma are City Council members.