WASHINGTON - A chairman of the 9/11 Commission said yesterday it defies logic that a secret panel of bureaucrats could slash New York City’s federal security funding.

"There are two cities that" Osama "bin Laden has said - before 9/11 and after 9/11 - that he wants to hit, ... and that’s Washington and New York," former Chairman Thomas Kean said. "So it defies any kind of logic that they don’t have the vast majority of the funds."

Kean, the Republican ex-governor of New Jersey, also said he couldn’t explain how anonymous panels of "peer reviewers" concluded that the city’s terror plans were among the worst in the nation.

"If you’ve got a secret commission, it’s very hard to judge what they say," he said.

The peer reviewers ranked many of New York’s counterterrorism proposals in the bottom 15 percent of the nation, and the city’s funding was slashed 40 percent last week.

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Pete King, R-N.Y., said the dismal ranking shows "either hopeless incompetence or bias," referring to suggestions that some feds resent the New York City Police Department’s 1,000-officer counterterrorism force.

Kean, whose commissioners gave the feds a report card loaded with F’s last winter for failing to learn the lessons of Sept. 11, said New York’s efforts were the best.

"I’ll tell you, New York is a model city," Kean said.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly also scoffed at the secret reviewers’ ratings, including the claim that New York’s efforts are not sustainable. "Someone is sustaining it, and right now it’s New York City taxpayers," he said.