Many rap heat aid program at hearing
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A state proposal to scale back a federally funded program providing low-income families help to keep the heat on this winter was almost uniformly unpopular with speakers at a public hearing yesterday.
Utility company representatives joined with social service workers in telling the state Department of Public Welfare that the planned start date of Dec. 1 is too late for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program and the planned completion date of March 15, 2010, comes too early.
They also expressed disappointment with a move to go back to an income eligibility limit of 150 percent of federal poverty income guidelines. Last year, Liheap assistance was available for families earning up to approximately 200 percent of the guidelines and served some 400,000 families in Pennsylvania.
And speakers challenged the very legality of at least one aspect of the proposed plan -- its declaration that a termination notice issued by a regulated utility company between Dec. 1 and March 31 is not proof of a home heating emergency, and therefore does not make a household eligible to receive a crisis grant.
Citing a paragraph from Pennsylvania law setting code for public utilities, Nancy J. Taylor said the qualifications for Liheap say a public utility's termination notice "shall be sufficient proof of a crisis." Ms. Taylor is a senior manager with the National Fuel Gas Distribution Corp., a Williamsville, N.Y.-based natural gas utility serving 14 counties in northwestern Pennyslvania.
"This is a statute, and we question how the department can formulate a policy year after year in direct violation of a statute," she said.
Besides contradicting state law, Ms. Taylor said the provision discriminates against customers of regulated utilities because other consumers, who either receive their gas from unregulated suppliers or use "deliverable "fuels" such as propane, are not subject to the December-March restriction in obtaining a crisis grant.
Both utilities and service agencies have called upon the department for years to extend Liheap's program year, to raise the eligible income levels and to eliminate perceived discrimination against utility customers.
A new issue for some this year was the public welfare department's intent to set aside 15 percent of its funds for a weatherization program run by the state Department of Community and Economic Development. A standard feature of Liheap in the past, the set-aside drew fire because the economic development department is slated to receive an unprecedented $252 million in federal stimulus funds for weatherization.
"With the stimulus money, as well as the economic situation that most people are in, we feel like the DCED set-aside should be reduced or eliminated," Dominion Peoples spokesman Elmore Lockley said in an interview.
Yesterday's hearing was the last in a series of three. The first was held Monday in Harrisburg, the second, on Wednesday in Philadelphia.
At least one concern raised -- that the department would not be able to give due consideration to this week's testimony in the face of a Sept. 1 deadline for filing its plan with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services -- was answered. The agency has received, an extension of the deadline to Sept. 30.
First Published August 28, 2009 12:00 am
