With one of the worst winters ever in Missouri and Illinois, Heat-Up St Louis and its 15 partnering social service, community action, governmental and utility partners are still beating the bushes for utility assistance dollars. The wolves are already at the doors of thousands of seniors and disabled on fixed incomes and working poor families, who are making decisions between eating or heating, paying the rent while their home heating budgets have sky-rocketed upwards in some cases to 35 percent.
Many Missourians are still baffled at Governor Jay Nixon’s decision to reallocate $15 million of LIHEAP dollars from the urban cores of Kansas City and St. Louis to that of about 15,000 propane households in outlying areas so they can have warmth. While Attorney General Chris Koster is investigating alleged price-fixing in the propane industry, why would any state official not entrust utility funds with those that are regulated through the Missouri Public Service Commission, the norm for Ameren Missouri and Laclede Gas? The propane industry is not regulated.
Most recently we participated in a Consumer Services Roundtable hosted by the Missouri Public Service Commission (PSC) and its chair, attorney Robert Kenney. The diverse group with broad representation further focused on searching for dollars and new long-term, methods and procedures of improving the utility assistance arena. As far as I’m concerned, the system is broken. That’s one primary reason I created Heat-Up St. Louis 14 years ago as a regional safety net.Â
The roundtable representation included the Office of Public Counsel, Committee to Keep Missourians Warm, Department of Health and Senior Services, utilities and social service and community action agencies, who dispense Heat-Up St. Louis and other public and private utility funds that can be effectively bundled as leveraged fiscal resources drastically reducing high utility bills, often while packaging LIHEAP (federal) and Utilicare (state) dollars. Gov. Nixon has yet to fund the Utilicare program; the last time dollars flowed into our needy neighborhoods was during Gov. Matt Blunt’s administration.
Being without a home heating source has historically become a health and safety issue. Winter time has the highest incidents of home fires throughout the nation. People keeping their primary heating disconnected while relying heavily on heaters and other gadgets have become financial and safety nightmares. In St. Louis city earlier this winter, a drastic fire produced the death of a small child, and fire officials discovered the use of 10 space heaters.
We are therefore puzzled why Gov. Nixon, Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder or state lawmakers from the St. Louis region have not vigorously called for Utilicare funding. We call on Nixon and the Legislature to stand up now and help heat up Missouri.
Trotter is founder and interim executive director of Heat-Up St, Louis, a regional, all-volunteer utility assistance charity. The 56-member community board doesn’t allow public donations to be used for administrative expenses; all dollars service the needy.
