This article was reprinted with permission from Virginia Mercury.
Virginians who need help paying for their heating and cooling bills could have longer periods to apply to the state for assistance if a bill makes it through the Senate and Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s review.
Currently, people can only apply for the state’s Energy Assistance Program to help pay for heating bills between the second Tuesday in October and second Friday in November. The application window to help with cooling bills runs from June 15 to Aug. 15.
A bill from Del. Phil Hernandez, D-Norfolk, would let the Board of Social Services extend those application periods as long as there was adequate funding for more staff to handle additional submissions.
“At the end of the day, you don’t want people on the hottest day of the summer to not have AC, and likewise, on bone-chilling days of winter they have no heat,” Hernandez said in an interview. “It is about that basic level of human need that we’re trying to address for people who just don’t have the money.”
Funding for the state Energy Assistance Program, which also oversees weatherization projects to increase homes’ ability to conserve energy, flows from the federal government through the Low-Income Heating and Energy Assistance Program.
This year the state has received $93 million from LIHEAP. In 2022 and 2021, at the peak of COVID-19 relief funding, it received about $200 million.
The LIHEAP funds are divided up among different projects overseen by the Energy Assistance Program, with $50 million available for heating assistance this year, a Virginia Department of Social Services spokesperson previously told the Mercury.
Advocates have long complained the short application periods for the programs make it unnecessarily hard for people who need assistance to get it and can lead to Virginia not using all the federal dollars it’s granted for the program. Hernandez said that in fiscal year 2021, only 30% of the income-eligible population received the heating assistance benefit.
“When it comes to heating assistance, time is always of the essence because the seasons come and go and we want to make sure that we are using these funds in a way that they are designed for,” Hernandez said.
Dana Wiggins of the Virginia Poverty Law Center, which operates a utility helpline, said the organization has heard “horrible” stories of people who just miss the application window and face the risk of service disconnection.
“It should be a no-brainer to keep our own money that’s already been allocated,” she said in an interview.
Several utilities, including Virginia Natural Gas, Columbia Gas of Virginia, Washington Gas and Appalachian Power Company, are also supporting the bill, as is the Virginia Department of Social Services.
“The bill is trying to get the applicants that may need it, because you’re not really thinking about heating your house and office when it’s 100 degrees outside,” VDSS Deputy Commissioner of Human Services Carl Ayers told lawmakers. “By the time you are thinking about heating your house in November, the application window is already closed.”
While DSS already has a regulation revision underway that would extend the application window to year-round, Hernandez said it could be three years before the process is complete.
His bill would speed up the regulatory process the Board of Social Services would have to take to extend the application windows by exempting it from certain Administrative Process Act requirements. The law would still require a public comment period, but the exemptions would mean the change could go into effect by the end of this year.
While an initial version of Hernandez’ bill would have required the Board of Social Services to adopt regulations to make the application window year-round, lawmakers’ concerns about costs led them to make any extension conditional on available funding.
A Department of Planning and Budget document notes expanding the application period to year-round could increase applications by roughly 3%, requiring an additional $1.8 million to hire more workers at the local level and pay for technology to process applications. It also states that if the bill passes and all the assistance funds are spent, DSS will need to either reduce the average benefit given to applicants or create a waitlist.
“It is assumed that a waitlist is not the desirable outcome, and benefits amounts will be adjusted to provide funding to all eligible applicants,” the document states.
