Rauner’s 2016 budget would cut off 190,000 households 

It was like a bad April Fools’ Day prank, only a few days early.

Springfield resident Tara Lybarger, a 42-year-old cashier at a laundromat, had been waiting since December to get signed up for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). On March 24, a few days before the appointment was scheduled, she got a call back. They were out of money.

“When I got that call that I wasn’t getting the help, I was devastated,” Lybarger said. “Like ‘Oh no, what am I going to do now?’ ” LIHEAP came close to having its state funding sacrificed to fix the Fiscal Year 2015 budget, until the General Assembly chose to spare it. But it is still at risk in next years budget.

LIHEAP is a federal program that offers assistance paying utility bills to low-income workers. Illinois is one of several states that provide additional funding to the program for its low-income residents, adding about $165 million in Fiscal Year 2015, which ends June 30.

Anyone who uses the program has to earn less than 150 percent of the federal poverty measure, which equals $17,665 a year for an individual or $36,375 for a family of four. The program’s funding comes from the Supplemental Low-Income Energy Assistance Fund (SLEAF), which itself is funded through surcharges utility companies charge their customers. That money is designated specifically for the LIHEAP program.

Just before going on spring break for two weeks, the Illinois General Assembly passed a stopgap funding measure which filled a $1.6 billion hole in the remaining Fiscal Year 2015 budget by “sweeping” money from several special state funds. There was also a 2.25 percent cut to many state agencies. In total, the General Assembly swept $1.3 billion from 106 special funds, but SLEAF was ultimately spared.

“We are very thankful to both the governor and the General Assembly because our program, the LIHEAP program, was spared from being swept for the 2015 budget,” said Dalitso Sulamoyo, president and CEO of the Illinois Association of Community Action Agencies (IACAA), an organization that helps people who qualify sign up for the program.

Though SLEAF did not get swept to plug the 2015 budget hole, it’s still on the chopping block for Fiscal Year 2016, which starts July 1. Gov. Bruce Rauner’s budget proposal zeroes out state supplemental funding for the LIHEAP program. Instead of funding the LIHEAP program, the utility surcharges would go into the General Revenue Fund, effectively becoming a tax.

“To close a $6 billion budget deficit and address years of fiscal mismanagement and insider deals, the governor’s budget brings Illinois in line with 20 other states that only use federal dollars to fund the program,” said Rauner spokeswoman Catherine Kelly, pointing out that Illinois would still be getting $330 million in LIHEAP funding from the federal government. “As in the past, the state will work to make sure that subsidies go to those most in need.”

The LIHEAP program, with the state supplement, serves 420,000 households in Illinois. Sulamoyo said that without that state funding, nearly 190,000 of those households would be left without aid.

“Clearly the federal funding is not enough,” Sulamoyo said. “To serve the eligible population, we need both state and federal (funds).”

It was on the actual April Fools’ Day that Lybarger, the laundromat worker, got some good news: she will receive LIHEAP after all.

“I don’t know what I’d do without the program,” Lybarger said. “Without them, I know I would’ve been cut off this week.”

Lybarger, who has relied on LIHEAP since 2011, said up until she found out she was actually getting the aid this year, she wasn’t sure how she was going to get by.

“I was like, ‘Well, I guess if we get cut, we’ve got a tent,’ ” she said. “We’ll go somewhere that has running water and I’ll take a shower and I’ll get ready and I’ll go work. I don’t know what else to do.”

Contact Alan Kozeluh at [email protected].