Connecticut lawmakers sounded the alarm — yet again — on Wednesday about cuts by the Trump administration, this time to the staff of a program that helps 200,000 of the state’s most vulnerable residents keep warm each winter. As part of the administration’s layoff of 10,000 employees in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the entire staff of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, LIHEAP, was eliminated. More than 6 million people across the country receive assistance from the program. Lawmakers warned that the cuts threaten to put Connecticut’s most vulnerable in harm’s way, and could also result in higher taxes and higher electricity bills for the state’s residents writ large. Sen. Matthew Lesser, D-Middletown, one of the co-chairs of the Human Services Committee, led a press conference on Wednesday to bring attention to the cuts and call on the Trump administration to restore the LIHEAP positions. “It is a vital lifeline to the keep people with disabilities, to keep the elderly, to keep low income people from freezing to death in the winter,” Lesser said. “Without that program, there is no alternative. There is no additional safety net.” While there is still no word on whether the funding for the program will be cut, the elimination of the program’s staff has left lawmakers and officials confused and worried. “What we don’t know is if this is the first step to dismantling this program,” Lesser said. “There’s a thing that people say in this building, and they also say in Washington: personnel is policy. So in this case we have no personnel, so does that mean we have no policy?” Federal LIHEAP funding is distributed via block grants to the states, which in turn administer their own programs enrolling qualified residents and paying out benefits. Connecticut’s program, run by the state Department of Social Services, or DSS, is known as the Connecticut Energy Assistance Program. Peter Hadler, deputy commissioner of DSS, said that the officials that were dismissed had played a critical role in the program’s success, from reviewing the state’s plan for distributing the funding to conducting audits. Hadler said CEAP is currently waiting on $8 million in reimbursement from LIHEAP. “Right now, we don’t know who to call,” Hadler said. “Emails bounce back from people we had worked with for many years who were deeply knowledgeable of the program.” The uncertainty over the future of the program has also rattled local distributors of fuel oil in Connecticut, many of whom have already had to grapple with cuts to the assistance their customers rely on for deliveries. Chris Herb, president of the Connecticut Energy Marketers Association, urged officials in Washington, D.C., to travel to Connecticut before making further cuts. “Take a look at the impact that this has on real people,” Herb said. “Real people who have needs, people who are exposed to the potential damage that this could do with frozen pipes or even worse, health conditions.” Rep. Jillian Gilchrest, D-West Hartford, the Human Services Committee’s other co-chair, said that while it’s not surprising that the Trump administration may want to make some changes to the Department of Health and Human Services, she thought the cuts being made — including to personnel of programs for young children and homeless youth — are impulsive. “It’s like coming into an office building as a new tenant and saying, ‘You know what? I don’t want it to look like this,’ but instead of having conversations on how best to restructure, they’re just tearing down walls, tearing down beams and what we’re left with is just rubble,” Gilchrest said. “Don’t just tear it all apart. Make decisions that are informed, because you’re hurting people.” In addition to those people who receive direct support on their heating bills, the loss of LIHEAP funding could force higher costs onto millions of other customers’ electric and gas utility bills. Connecticut law generally prohibits utilities from shutting off gas or electric services between November and May for people experiencing economic hardship, if they require those services to heat their homes. Even outside of that winter moratorium, utilities must give a 13-day notice before a shutoff — allowing bills to rack up for people who are unable to pay them. When utilities are unable to collect overdue payments, those costs become grouped together as “uncollectibles” that are then recouped from other customers under the public benefits charge on their monthly bills. “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 are paid for by all ratepayers,” said Consumer Counsel Claire Coleman, who’s office represents utility customers before regulators.  Nearly 65% of Connecticut residents who receive federal assistance for their heating bills rely on electric or natural gas utilities as their primary heating source, according to Coleman’s office. Eversource spokeswoman Jamie Ratliff said that roughly 30,000 of the utility’s electric and gas customers in Connecticut received direct support on their utility bills from the CEAP last year — though she noted that many others likely received assistance for fuel deliveries. “We, like many others, await details of the future of LIHEAP and remain hopeful the program will continue,” Ratliff said in a statement. A spokeswoman for Avangrid, which owns both electric and gas utilities in Connecticut, said that its customers have received roughly $4.5 million in assistance from CEAP so far this winter. Both utilities also offer payment matching programs and discount rates for customers who qualify for CEAP or other assistance programs. Questions remain about how much Connecticut could compensate for federal cuts with state taxes. “Yes, there are conversations going on about ‘is it raining?’ — using the rainy day fund,” Gilchrest said. “But with these cuts coming, two, three, four a day at this point in time, there’s only so much we can do. And of course we will — we will step up. We’re not going to let our citizens go cold. But it’s ridiculous at this point in time, and we all pay federal taxes, too.” ...read more read less