For the first time in four years, state officials in Connecticut are anticipating an increase in energy assistance for low-income families this winter, though it remains to be seen whether much-needed federal funding will come through to provide support for the program.
The Department of Social Services recently released its annual projected spending for the Connecticut Energy Assistance Program, including a maximum benefit of $1,920 this winter, which is $160 more than last year.
Base benefits for households also grew by $115 in the department’s latest plan, though they remain well below pre-pandemic levels.
But state officials also were cautious about the ultimate fate of their plans, given that President Donald Trump has proposed eliminating federal grants to support state programs offering energy assistance.
Earlier this year, Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services fired all of the staff members assigned to the federal government’s Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program — sending state officials scrambling to find someone in the administration to take their calls and release the remaining grant funds.
During a hearing before lawmakers last week, DSS Commissioner Andrea Barton Reeves said that state employees working on energy assistance have been able to communicate with their federal counterparts via email but have not received any instructions to shutter the program or stop accepting new applications.
“We’ve been operating as if the office was still intact,” Reeves said. “It’s very hard to predict what’s going to happen now.”
Meanwhile, members of both parties in Congress have fought to preserve or even increase federal funding for the LIHEAP program for the upcoming winter. Earlier this month, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to advance more than $4 billion in federal funding for the program, an increase of $20 million.
Advocates in Connecticut have praised those efforts while warning that that continued staff shortages have left the program teetering.
“It’s really going to test the system,” said Chris Herb, the president of the Connecticut Energy Marketers Association, a trade group representing hundreds of fuel oil delivery companies around the state.
“From a small business perspective, you know, our role in this is that we’re the ones who are at these customers’ homes throughout the winter,” Herb added. “If there’s no money to pay us, it becomes very difficult to to be able to participate in a program.”
It remains uncertain whether Trump and Congress will adopt a new budget before the federal fiscal year begins Oct. 1. But if LIHEAP funds are jeopardized, it likely will trigger a fierce debate here over whether Connecticut should fund winter energy assistance with state money.
“One way or another, we’re not going to let residents freeze to death,” said Sen. Matt Lesser, D-Middletown, co-chairman of the General Assembly’s Human Services Committee. Lesser’s panel, in conjunction with the Appropriations and Energy & Technology committees, recently approved state social services officials’ plans to spend federal LIHEAP and related funds this winter.
In order to be eligible for Connecticut’s program, households must have income at or below 60% of the state median, which is $91,854 for a family of four. Benefits are tiered based on income and the presence of other vulnerability factors.
Basic benefits this winter for non-vulnerable households would range from $295 to $595 under DSS’ latest plan. For vulnerable households — which are categorized as any household with a member who is 60 or older, has a disability, or has a child that under age 6 — benefits would range from $345 to $645.
The program also provides as many as three “crisis assistance” payments of $425 each for certain households that rely on deliverable fuels, such as home heating oil, and that have exhausted their basic benefit grants.
Those grants, though increasing, are well below pre-pandemic levels and those offered during the early years of the coronavirus. The maximum grant was $2,980 in the winters of 2019-20 and 2020-21 before surging to $4,125 in 2021-22.
From there, benefit levels steadily dropped, along with federal LIHEAP grants.
And though overall projected spending for this winter’s program is up 3%, from $86.4 million to $89.2 million, the federal LIHEAP contribution is expected to remain flat at $81.7 million.
State officials supplemented last year’s energy assistance chiefly with $4.2 million in funding from another federal program, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. That funding is no longer available.
This year, the state plans to augment its LIHEAP grant with more than $7 million in unused funds from past winter heating assistance efforts.
Meanwhile, the Department of Social Services projects demand this winter at 100,375 households, up sharply from an estimated 88,485 recipients one year ago.
Demand has been very volatile in recent years, although the overall trend has been upward. The caseload stood at 75,300 households just before the pandemic and climbed as high as 105,700 in the winter of 2022-23 and stayed above 100,000 the next year before dropping again last winter.
Herb said the participation in the program peaked in the years around Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which caused a global surge in the price of fuel oil. After watching numbers fall off last year, he said, he’s yet to receive an explanation from DSS as to why they projected another increase this winter.
“I don’t think that there’s any threat that they’re gonna run out of money, because I don’t think that they’ll meet their anticipated participation numbers,” Herb said.
State funding?
The state’s Low-Income Energy Water Advisory Board, other energy assistance advocates, and many majority Democrats in the General Assembly’s majority have called in recent years for Connecticut to supplement shrinking federal LIHEAP grants with state money.
Gov. Ned Lamont, a fiscally moderate Democrat, has pushed against that, arguing energy assistance chiefly is a federal responsibility. But the governor compromised in February 2024, agreeing to dedicate $17 million in state funds to bolster the program.
Reeves told legislators at last week’s hearing that her agency’s best guess was that federal LIHEAP funding would be available to Connecticut this winter but said it’s difficult to predict what Congress will decide long-term.
“We’re really trying to think as optimistically as possible,” she said.
Both Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, co-chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, and Lesser said many legislators will push to maintain some form of state-funded energy assistance program if Washington eliminates LIHEAP.
“We have the capacity to do it. We have the capacity to fund that,” Osten said. “LIHEAP is too important for us to allow no [federal funding] whatsoever.”
Lamont’s budget staff projects Connecticut closed the 2024-25 fiscal year on June 30 with a nearly $2.5 billion surplus, which would be the second-largest in state history and equal to nearly 11% of the General Fund.
Nora Duncan, director of the AARP’s Connecticut chapter, called the projected increase in energy assistance grants this winter “a real win for low-income seniors and families.”
Duncan serves on the state’s energy advisory board, which has been pushing in recent years for increased assistance levels and supplemental state funding for the program.
Even with aid to households expected to grow, having the state share the cost of keeping vulnerable residents warm must continue to be explored, she said.
Generation Power CT, a Hartford-based energy assistance nonprofit formerly known as Operation Fuel, expects to help more than 5,000 Connecticut households cover their utility bills over the next year, said Gannon Long, its chief policy and public affairs officer.
“Income-limited households in our state continue struggling to pay for essentials,” Long said, adding that “the hardest time to manage an emergency is when you’re already in one … As we look ahead toward the next legislative session, we ask leaders in our state to keep vulnerable families top of mind.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
