Vermont commits $15.3M to expand heating assistance amid high fuel prices

Theo Wells-Spackman is a Report for America corps member who reports for VTDigger.

Vermont officials approved a $15.3 million state funding package to expand home heating aid programs on Friday.

The state administers lump-sum seasonal fuel assistance benefits for financially qualifying households and also directs funds to a program that provides aid in crises when eligible people run out of fuel later in the heating season. 

The new state money approved Friday will increase the amount of seasonal aid that Vermont can provide this year for households heating with oil and kerosene, which have skyrocketed in price. More than half of the roughly 15,000 qualifying households across Vermont that received help from the program last year rely on those two fuel types, officials said.

The package will also double the “crisis fuel” program’s capacity, allowing an extra 2,400 households to be able to receive payments to avoid a heating emergency this winter.

Residential heating oil prices have risen by about 76% since last fall, with kerosene prices soaring by 61% over the same period, officials estimated. A number of state and federal officeholders in Vermont have expressed increasing concern in recent weeks about their constituents’ ability to keep warm this winter in a state that depends heavily on oil for heating.

Vermont’s Emergency Board, which includes Republican Gov. Phil Scott and the four Democratic lawmakers who chair committees that oversee state finances, unanimously passed the proposal Friday.

In the past, seasonal heating benefits have generally covered about 45% of recipients’ anticipated fuel needs, drawing primarily on funds from the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which is set to send Vermont nearly $23 million this year. The newly bolstered state program can likely cover about 62% of fuel needs this year for Vermonters using oil or kerosene, according to Miranda Gray, who leads the Economic Services Division of the Department for Children and Families.

About 38% of fuel assistance recipients in Vermont use home heating oil, and 14% use kerosene, according to her department, with others relying on alternatives like propane, wood or natural gas.

Vermont has taken similar steps to bolster heating assistance in response to fuel prices before, including in 2023, but a spokesperson for the Department for Children and Families could not immediately find records of a state contribution this significant in the past. 

The current cost pressures are essentially “unique,” according to Sen. Andrew Perchlik, D/P-Washington, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee and sits on the emergency board. His goal while helping negotiate the proposal, he said, was to keep low-income Vermonters’ winter fuel costs essentially in line with last year.

Time was running out to make such an adjustment to the program, Perchlik added, given that Vermont generally dispenses lump-sum fuel assistance benefits in November.

Scott likewise underlined the measure’s importance in the emergency board meeting, saying it would “give some comfort to those who we need to protect across Vermont.”

He added that the sharp increase in fuel prices “could have been avoided, but hasn’t been,” appearing to refer to the Trump administration’s decisions with respect to the Iran war. 

House Ways and Means Committee Chair Emilie Kornheiser, D-Brattleboro, agreed, adding that other cost pressures — like food — are weighing on her constituents simultaneously.

“So many of us don’t have any extra wiggle room at all in our budgets,” she said, saying protecting Vermonters’ access to bare necessities is “the basic minimum that a government can do.”

It’s a message that Travis Poulin, community action network director at the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity, is hearing more often as temperatures begin to drop.

“Any additional funds that can help prevent a family from running out of home heating fuel, from having their pipes burst, is money well spent,” he said in an interview Thursday in advance of the board’s meeting. 

Fuel prices will inevitably put a strain on households across the state, affecting vulnerable families and older Vermonters the most, Poulin said.

“It’s going to be a difficult winter,” he said.

The funds for Friday’s proposal will be drawn from a pot of money that lawmakers set aside last year as a cushion to shore up state agencies affected by federal funding cuts. Friday marked the second time the emergency board has drawn from those reserves, after it approved a state-funded stopgap for food assistance payments during the federal government shutdown a year ago.

Vermont’s congressional delegation has also sounded the alarm over heating assistance in recent weeks, with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., calling for a broad expansion of federal LIHEAP funding. 

If more federal funding does become available, unused money from Friday’s proposal could be returned to the state’s reserves, Gray said.

Some state legislators are cautious about expecting such a windfall.

“I’m not going to hold my breath,” said Perchlik.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont commits $15.3M to expand heating assistance amid high fuel prices.

Courtesy of VT Digger