Helping LIHEAP

Certainly, Gov. Angus King and the Maine congressional delegation are right to press a reluctant Congress to substantially increase heating assistance for the poor, as they have done in recent weeks. But Maine can do even more to ensure that the money it does receive goes further.

The Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) began nearly 20 years ago after spikes in oil prices in the 1970s and early 1980s drove heating costs up to 30 percent or 40 percent of the budgets of poor families. Conservatives in Congress, who despised the program, repeatedly tried to kill it or, failing that, cut it into insignificance. LIHEAP has survived in reduced form – its most generous days were in the mid- to late-1980s – but is badly needed again, now that oil prices have jumped up.

The repeated assaults on LIHEAP have had one beneficial effect; they have spurred some efficiency programs to spread out the dollars available to greatest effect. Maine does well with, for instance, LIHEAP’s Leveraging Incentive Program, which sends additional dollars a state’s way when it puts in some of its own money. This year, for instance, the state got $363,000 in additional federal money from leveraging; last year, it received $413,000. And Maine, like other states, has assured that LIHEAP customers get the best cash price from oil dealers, saving 5 percent to 10 percent on the price.

A task force last summer suggested the state go further, however, by doing what many individual customers do: Buy the oil in the spring and summer when prices are lowest. It sounds simple and sensible enough, but because the federal government makes its LIHEAP payments to the states in October, Maine would have to put up its own money to buy early and hope Washington came through with a reimbursement later in the year. Given the attempts by Congress to wipe out the program, this is no sure thing. The Maine State Housing Authority currently is discussing with federal officials how Maine might make the early purchases and be assured of receiving the federal funding later.

More than 38,000 low-income families in Maine rely in LIHEAP each winter to keep their furnaces running. Returning LIHEAP to its earlier funding levels, as state officials have pleaded with Washington to do, is absolutely essential. But so is stretching what money the state does receive. The task force recommendation of buying early – if not all, then at least the portion of the heating oil equal to what the minimum likely funding is for the next year – makes sense. It’s one more way to help low-income families get through a long winter.