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Hungry New Yorkers will be able to apply for Food Stamps online by early next year, months later than a City Council mandate originally requested, officials said this week.

The City hopes to roll out a pilot program for the online application at selected food pantries and job centers by December, according to Seth Diamond, Human Resources Administration executive deputy commissioner for family independence, who spoke Monday at a Council General Welfare Committee hearing.

If the pilot is successful, HRA plans to expand the service to other locations during the beginning of 2007. A more complete timeline for the new application will be released in September.

Anti-hunger advocates have spent the last several years trying to reduce the bureaucratic barriers that sometime prevent people from applying for Food Stamps. These initiatives have succeeded in shortening the application itself from 16 pages to four, and extending hours at HRA centers to make them more accessible to working applicants.

Still, reports estimate that 600,000 city residents are eligible for food stamps but are not receiving them. Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan) recently announced that cutting that number by half would be a central goal of her term.

An online application has been hailed as a potentially groundbreaking change in the distribution and availability of Food Stamps. Even if the application could only be accessed on secure sites – meaning, not in the comfort of one’s own home – the increased flexibility of the times and locations could open the door to many new applicants.

“If HRA allows most of the online applicants to avoid going to an HRA office in person, this project could revolutionize – in a positive manner – Food Stamp access in New York City,” said Joel Berg, executive director of the Coalition Against Hunger, in written testimony to the council. “Many of our continuing criticism of the management of the Food Stamp Program could be addressed.”

The idea drew the attention of councilmen Eric Gioia (D-Sunnyside) and Bill DeBlasio (D-Brooklyn), who introduced a bill last summer that called upon the HRA to have an online application up and running within a year. Mayor Mike Bloomberg vetoed the legislation, but it was overridden, and the law took effect in late October.

The Mayor called the bill unconstitutional and refused to enforce it, sticking to its own schedule that falls slightly outside the Council’s deadline. Fearful of giving the appearance of a welfare state, Bloomberg has been reluctant to follow other Food Stamp initiatives, such as distributing paper applications in soup kitchens and accepting a federal waiver that would expand the program.

Still, since Bloomberg took office, participation in the Food Stamp program has increased more than 25 percent, surpassing levels not seen since early in the Giuliani Administration.

“The Administration has been very careful in the ways it approaches these programs,” said Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs. “We always make decisions on what works and what doesn’t, and pursue policies based on that.”