SAN ANTONIO -- Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros will be involved in a review of the controversial taxpayer-funded organization ACORN.

Cisneros said Thursday that his role in the organization's internal review will be that of an advisory council member.

The review comes on the heels of several Republican lawmakers, including Rep. Lamar Smith of San Antonio and U.S. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, call for a full investigation into the practices of the group.

"ACORN is an important organization that does important work," Cisneros, who has worked closely with the group over the years, said Thursday night.

Cisneros said while ACORN has been instrumental in helping low income families find affordable housing, he admits that positive work has been overshadowed by allegations of widespread voter fraud during the 2008 Presidential election and further damaged by a series of undercover videos that surfaced last week on several conservative Web sites.

The videos, shot by a self-described activist film maker in several U.S. cities, show actors portraying a pimp and his hooker getting disturbing advice from several ACORN workers as they attempted to set up a fictitious child prostitution ring. Cisneros said he was shocked by what he saw on the videos.

"I said to some of the ACORN officials yesterday, something is fundamentally wrong with the culture of the organization when that can happen," Cisneros said. "Even if they were suckered, even it was done falsely, it still indicates the organization has some shaping up to do."

On Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to withhold millions of dollars in federal funding to the agency, following the Senate's lead which also voted to withhold taxpayer money on Tuesday. Cisneros said the agency will have to make some major changes if it wants to get more funding in the future.

"Any organization that takes public money has to be accountable, has to be transparent, has to be effective and ACORN has some work to do," he said.

As Cornyn calls on his Democratic colleagues to launch a full Senate investigation of ACORN to get to the bottom of any possible criminal wrongdoing, Cisneros said his part in the independent review will be to look the agency over from top to bottom.

"There's obviously some gaps in the way they bring people into the system, there's some gaps in the way they counsel," Cisneros said. "It's no defense to say that you are under attack when there are gaping holes."