U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, with Gov. Ned Lamont: “We need to work together at a time that we are at the whims of a vindictive [federal] government.” State Sen Cathy Osten (right), with State Sen. Matt Lesser: “Let’s keep our oil here. Let’s heat our own people.” Gov. Ned Lamont annou nced on Tuesday that the state plans to kick in an extra $12.7 million on top of roughly $90 million from the feds to help low-income Connecticut residents fill up their heating oil tanks this winter. Do state lawmakers expect to ask the governor to allocate millions of dollars more on this front, given that home heating oil prices have increased by 80 percent since last year? “Yes,” State Appropriations Committee Co-Chair and Sprague State Sen. Cathy Osten replied. But, first, “we have to have the facts” before asking for an exact dollar amount above what’s now been proposed. That more-aid-but-is-it-enough question was at the center of a Tuesday afternoon press conference held in a fourth-floor office at the Community Action Agency of New Haven’s headquarters at 419 Whalley Ave. Gov. Ned Lamont convened the presser to announce that he has asked state legislative leaders to pull $12.7 million from Connecticut’s Federal Cuts Response Fund to supplement federal aid for home heating oil assistance this winter. U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro also announced at Tuesday’s presser that the federal Department of Health Human Services (HHS) has newly released $75.3 million in Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) funds to Connecticut. That federal LIHEAP aid will likely increase to at least $94 million — the same amount that Connecticut received for this program last year — when the U.S. Senate settles on a final dollar number later this year. Speakers at Tuesday’s presser said that the $12 million in state funding that Lamont has newly proposed will be spent only after Connecticut goes through the entirety of its $90 million-plus federal allocation for this program. Providing low-income Connecticut residents with home heating assistance is “one of the most critical services our agencies provide,” Community Action Agency of New Haven President and CEO Amos Smith said. “The cost of keeping a home warm is becoming increasingly unaffordable” for low-income state residents, he continued, with the average price of home heating oil going up from around $3.25 per gallon in August 2025 to around $5.88 per gallon now. “It’s going to be harder for people to stretch that dollar,” DeLauro said. “This is how people stay warm,” state Department of Social Services (DSS) Commissioner Andrea Barton-Reeves added about the importance the Connecticut Energy Assistance Program (CEAP), which is funded through LIHEAP and which begins providing state-funded fuel deliveries in November. Barton-Reeves said that 94,291 Connecticut households are eligible to benefit from LIHEAP aid. DeLauro said that LIHEAP provides an average home-heating-oil benefit worth between $355 and $705, allowing eligible applicants to fill their heating oil tanks during the winter. During the question-and-answer portion of Tuesday’s presser, CT Mirror’s Mark Pazniokas, WSHU’s Ebong Udoma, and WTNH’s Mike Cerulli pressed the elected officials on how this combination of federal and state aid will stack up against the actual rising costs of home heating oil, especially given that those costs have shot up by around 80 percent. “We watch the spending [and] enrollment [in this program] every week,” Barton-Reeves said. If and when the state runs through this $90 million-plus in federal aid and $12 million in state aid, then the state’s executive and legislative branches will work together to figure out how much more to allocate towards home heating aid. “We’re really dealing with very unpredictable circumstances,” she continued, especially with the Trump administration’s ongoing war in Iran — and the resulting inflationary impact on energy prices. “The governor will no doubt be asked to provide additional funding” on this front, Blumenthal said. Tuesday’s press conference took place roughly two months after Lamont, Barton-Reeves, and a host of other state and local leaders gathered at this same Whalley building to announce a multi-million-dollar state boost for Connecticut residents kicked off of food stamps because of new federal work requirements. It also comes as the state is bracing for what Lamont described on Tuesday as an estimated $1 billion impact by new Medicaid work requirements and a resulting loss of health insurance coverage for low-income Connecticut residents. Which in turn led elected official after elected official at Tuesday’s presser — all Democrats — to urge voters to help Democrats regain control of Congress after November’s midterm elections. “Let’s put home heating oil on the ballot this November,” Blumenthal said, framing the assistance as a “moral obligation” that Democrats will stay united behind. “Everybody needs to show up to the polls,” said New Haven State Rep. and Appropriations Committee Co-Chair Toni Walker. “Hopefully, Washington is going to come back to the right place” after this year’s elections. “I hate playing defense,” added Lamont, about the state always having to respond to funding cuts and erratic policy directions from the Trump administration and a Republican-controlled Congress. Having DeLauro back as the chair of the Appropriations Committee, he said, should go a long way towards ensuring that low-income Connecticut residents get the aid they need. Meanwhile, in a Tuesday afternoon campaign press release sent out in advance of Lamont’s presser, Greenwich State Sen. and Republican gubernatorial candidate Ryan Fazio threw doubt on whether or not the state will actually follow through on spending allocated home-heating aid. “The real question is whether working families will actually see a dime,” Fazio is quoted as saying in that press release. “In 2023, Connecticut allocated $30 million in state heating assistance, and his administration failed to distribute. Why should families believe this time will be any different?” Asked by Cerulli on Tuesday about this statement, Lamont replied that this is the first time a Republican has criticized a Democrat for not spending enough government funds. That said, Lamont continued, roughly a third of Connecticut residents heat their homes with heating oil. Given the 80 percent increase in prices, he urged eligible residents to apply now so that they can fill up their tanks soon with the help of this federal-and-state assistance. He also noted that the state’s Federal Cuts Response Fund, which started out with $500 million, now has around $250 million left. He said he should have a better sense in the coming months as to just how big of a gap the state will need to fill because of coming Medicaid-eligibility-related cuts. “I cannot make up all of the Trump cuts,” he said. Thus the importance of Democrats taking back the majority in Congress and DeLauro regaining the gavel of Appropriations, which should both increase and make more predictable the amount of financial assistance Connecticut receives from Washington. 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