Two key Republican lawmakers in the Kentucky legislature are voicing support for a federal program helping tens of thousands of Kentucky households with heating and cooling costs as the Trump administration proposes to eliminate the funding.
Sen. Brandon Smith, R-Hazard, and Rep. Jim Gooch, R-Providence, co-chairs of the Interim Joint Natural Resources and Energy Committee, and other state lawmakers heard a Thursday presentation from a state official and a nonprofit executive director about assistance provided to Kentuckians through the federal Low Income House Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP.
The federally funded program established in 1981 can provide low-income recipients with a one-time credit toward electricity bills during the summer or winter — including in emergency situations when someone is facing a utility disconnection — or can pay for heating fuel costs including paying for wood, kerosene or coal. LIHEAP can also help pay for energy efficiency improvements to a residence.
The Trump administration in a budget proposal earlier this year called on Congress to completely eliminate the program’s more than $4 billion in funding, describing it as “unnecessary” and a “passthrough” to utilities. The administration wrote that low-income people instead can be supported “through energy dominance, lower prices, and an America First economic platform.” The administration also fired federal staff overseeing LIHEAP.
Gooch and Smith told the Lantern they were supportive of the program, though they also supported the Trump administration’s cost-cutting efforts to find efficiencies within LIHEAP.
“It’s a program that’s much needed, and it’s been around a long time. I don’t think that it’ll be cut,” Gooch said, who has been in the legislature since 1995. “They may look at it a little bit, but we’d hate to see that fund completely go away because too many people rely on it.”
There were 68,059 households in Kentucky that took advantage of the program’s “crisis benefits” to prevent utility disconnections, receiving an average amount per recipient of $345.07 for a total of $24 million in benefits, according to the state presentation Wednesday. More than $43 million through LIHEAP has been distributed to Kentuckians so far in the current fiscal year.
Rick Baker, the executive director of Community Action Kentucky, an organization representing 23 community action agencies across the state that helps distribute LIHEAP funding, told lawmakers community action agencies have sometimes run out of LIHEAP funding for crisis situations such as utility disconnections within 30 days but that extra federal appropriations, such as through the CARES Act, have kept funding sufficient.
“Some of these families without this system would have utilities disconnected,” Baker told the Lantern after his presentation. “If they did not have the resources to pay their electric bill or to get the coal or the wood, they would go without it. Because where else are they going to get it?”
Baker also said community action agencies were supportive of LIHEAP’s weatherization funding that can help pay for energy efficiency upgrades, such as insulating a home, to reduce a household’s “energy burden,” essentially the amount of household income that goes toward utility bills. Energy efficiency advocates argue that weatherization can be crucial in places such as Eastern Kentucky where residents grapple with a high energy burden.
Any budget proposal by the White House would have to be approved by Congress which allocates and sets appropriations. The Obama and Clinton administrations have previously tried to cut LIHEAP funding for different reasons, such as pointing to falling energy prices, without success, according to the Washington Post. Trump also argued for defunding LIHEAP during his first term.
Rep. Adam Moore, D-Lexington, asked Baker about how the potential for rising electricity rates in Kentucky could impact federal heating and cooling assistance, pointing to a report from the nonpartisan think tank Energy Innovation Policy and Technology. Baker said with a finite amount of federal funding, more energy costs per household would generally mean fewer households aided by LIHEAP.
Smith said he believed LIHEAP was a “good program” and that the state legislature could step in to fund heating and cooling assistance if Congress were to cut it. But he also said he supported any effort by the Trump administration to improve the assistance program.
“If they present us with a better way that’s more efficient, that gets more money to the people that need it and then gets rid of those that are abusing it, I’m open to hearing that,” Smith said. “I don’t see Kentucky abolishing it, but I won’t say that it may be upgraded.”
The Trump administration in its proposal to eliminate LIHEAP funding pointed to a 2010 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office as evidence of “significant program integrity concerns.” That report identified potential cases of fraud within the program, though the office has since stated all recommendations from that report have been implemented.
Liam Niemeyer covers government and policy in Kentucky and its impacts throughout the Commonwealth for the Kentucky Lantern. He most recently spent four years reporting award-winning stories for WKMS Public Radio in Murray.
