The Trump administration’s latest round of funding and personnel cuts includes the entire staff of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). The program is responsible for keeping the heat on for 200,000 Connecticut residents and more than 1.1 million New York residents.
Funding for the program itself hasn't been cut. But without its staff, some lawmakers said they were concerned about who would be around to administer the money.
“They might not have cut the funds, but they've taken away all the institutional knowledge and all the ability of anyone who works on that program across this country to have a point person for anyone federally to administer those funds,” State Rep. Jillian Gilchrest (D-West Hartford) said on Wednesday.
The cuts were made as part of larger layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services. The program, which costs HHS around 4.1 billion to run and benefits more than six million Americans, has around 35 staffers.
HHS spokesperson Emily Hillard told WSHU in a statement that they "will continue to comply with statutory requirements, and as a result of the reorganization, will be better positioned to execute on Congress’s statutory intent."
LIHEAP was created by Congress more than 40 years ago.
If the program was discontinued, it would have a wider impact on all Connecticut residents, according to state Consumer Counsel Claire Coleman.
State law requires electricity companies to keep heat on for customers who can’t pay their bills in the winter. Often, LIHEAP picks up that cost. If the program disappeared, many of those costs would be added to the controversial “public benefits charge” and passed on to other customers.
“We do anticipate that losing federal funding would mean customers would have more trouble paying their bills, and that means more bad debt, more late bills that then are paid for by all ratepayers,” Coleman said.
On the New York side, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D) said she would do everything in her power to reverse the cuts. She also reiterated the oft-repeated Democratic statement that the cuts were being made to finance a tax cut for the country's richest citizens.
“LIHEAP is a commonsense, bipartisan program,” Gillibrand said. “In the coldest and hottest months of the year, it lowers the cost of living and saves lives. By firing everyone who disburses LIHEAP funding, President Trump and the so-called ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ are preventing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding that Congress has already allocated to LIHEAP from reaching families in need.”
