Legislators won’t decide whether to supplement shrinking federal energy assistance funds with state dollars before the next regular session opens on Feb. 7, House Speaker Matt Ritter said Monday.
Leaders of Democratic majorities in the House and Senate still haven’t decided whether to hold a special session later this month on electric vehicle regulations. But if it is taken up, there likely wouldn’t be time to also address heating issues, said Ritter, D-Hartford.
But that doesn’t mean, he added, that lawmakers won’t revisit the Connecticut Energy Assistance Program at some point next month.
The program, which is administered by the state Department of Social Services, distributes federal Low Income Household Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) funds and is facing severe cutbacks.
Congress rolled LIHEAP funding this year back to pre-pandemic levels. Connecticut has about $85 million to distribute this winter — well below the $110 million-plus it awarded last year and the smallest amount since the winter of 2018-19.
But demand is up more than 40% from pre-pandemic levels, according to the social services department. Despite relatively mild weather, approved applications this year are up 14.4% from last winter’s pace and exceeded 63,400 through Jan. 6. At that pace, they would approach 121,000 before the program closes in the spring.
When state social services officials estimated last August that this winter’s demand could reach 116,300 applications, they projected the maximum amount the poorest household could receive was $1,350. That’s down almost $1,000 from last year’s top benefit, while many other families stand to lose hundreds of dollars.
The state’s Low Income Energy Advisory Board asked the General Assembly and Gov. Ned Lamont before the fall to bolster the $85 million Connecticut Energy Assistance Program budget by at least 20%, or roughly $17 million — to mitigate the financial hit.
That ask represents 2.5% of the $645 million surplus Lamont’s budget office estimates Connecticut will have when the fiscal year closes June 30.
The Lamont administration has offered two arguments against using state dollars on this program: The first is that LIHEAP is a federal responsibility; the second, that the program is only designed to help, not to cover the full winter heating needs of the poor.
Ritter has said legislators were wary of tackling this issue in special session given the governor’s position. But he also said lawmakers haven’t ruled out revisiting it during the regular session.
The danger of that approach, winter heating assistance advocates say, is that some families already are suffering.
“We can’t have people freezing,” said Nora Duncan, state director of the AARP and a member of the state energy advisory board.
“I get that a lot of tough decisions are ahead” for the legislature in the next regular session, she said, adding that the advisory committee’s request for supplemental funding is relatively modest. “I trust that the legislature will remain open to consider [more] funding before it runs out.”
For some residents of East Hampton, it already has.
Local officials have identified six residents that had exhausted their benefits by the first half of January, Eric Rosenberg, chairman of that community’s Commission on Aging said last Thursday.
“We’ve seen an urgent need to fund the energy assistance program due to several of our citizens already running out of heat and with winter in full swing and much more heating need ahead,” he said.
