Advocates Campaign for Energy Funding

By Maria I.E. Walters, Sun-Gazette Correspondent
The Sun-Gazette (Williamsport, PA)
August 17, 2002

The winter months may be dangerously colder for hundreds of Lycoming County residents due to a proposed federal budget cut in a home energy aid program.

“A few more than 800 houses would not be served in Lycoming County,” said Timothy Dahl, PPL Electric Utilities manager of regulatory programs and business services.

More than $1 million in federal heating assistance program money was spent last year to help 4,500 families pay their fuel and electricity bills.

That number could fall by 18 percent in 2002-03, according to David Fox, communications director for the Campaign for Home Energy Assistance.

Fox and Dahl recently visited the Sun-Gazette to seek help warning area recipients of the impending cutback.

The money comes from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which is available to assist households at or below the federal poverty level.

In a move to offset costs of the war on terrorism and counter the economic downturn the country has suffered over the past year and a half, President Bush has proposed cutting spending on a wide range of domestic programs, including home heating help.

If the Congress follows the president’s agenda, funding for the program would be reduced from $1.7 billion to $1.4 billion, according to Fox.

The Democratic-controlled Senate already has passed an energy programs budget that would keep heating assistance at the current level [NOTE: at the time this story was written, approval had come from the Senate Appropriations Committee, not the full Senate]. But the House, controlled by Bush’s fellow Republicans, will take up the measure after their summer recess and are expected to go along with his cost-cutting proposal.

“We are facing a very strong chance that they (Congress) are going to cut back the program,” Fox said. “This is in part due to military spending. The major consideration is homeland security. If you have to spend more, you have to cut somewhere else, deficit spend or raise taxes.”

He likened the issue to the homeland security issue, saying the heating program is also a security issue.

“It is an individual security issue for our elderly, our disabled, our working poor, the people we are trying to get off welfare and back to work: the kind of people LIHEAP helps keep alive,” he said.

Fox said the program does work and is saving lives. And “unless there is a public outcry saying this, too, is a national security issue” he fears funding will continue being cut.

Fox and Dahl urge people to write letters to their federal legislators asking them to support healthy funding for the energy program.

In Lycoming County, STEP Inc. manages the heating program and determines people’s eligibility to receive funds.

Last year, the state Department of Public Welfare dispensed nearly $92 million in heating assistance through county agencies like STEP, Dahl said. Thirty percent of all recipients were 60 or older, another 26 percent had a disabled person in the family, he said.

Fox estimated 295,000 state households received heating assistance.

However, many utility companies have programs to assist families that are not eligible for the federal program.

Combining the federal and utility companies’ programs, nearly 370,000 households were assisted.

“The number of households (in the state) that would be able to get help would decline to about 243,000. That’s 52,000 fewer households,” Fox said. “That’s pretty significant.”
Those most affected by the cut would be what Fox calls the “working poor,” or those [earning] between 135 percent to 150 percent [of] the national poverty level.

Under federal law, state can set up per eligibility limits between 110 percent and 150 percent of poverty level.

“Pennsylvania has gone as low as 110 percent. That cuts out a lot of the working poor,” Dahl said. “The past couple of years, we have remained at 135 percent.”

Fluctuation in funding makes communication of the program very difficult because people do now know when they are eligible, he said.

In Pennsylvania and nationally, one of every four families who are eligible for the program do not receive funds because they do not apply or apply after the money is gone.

“Here’s something else that’s scary. About one out of five households in the United States is eligible,” Fox said.

Fox said that funding limitations have a lot to do with who is served. “We run out of money every year in most states,” he said.

Recently, Senator Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said, “LIHEAP is a vital program, which prevents many low-income families from having to choose between (heating their homes) and having food on the table.”

Because Congress is not in session, no other comments could be obtained from Lycoming County’s other federal representatives.