Entergy Employees, LA Legislature & Low Income Advocates Ask Washington D.C. to Save LIHEAP

Submitted by Mary Broussard

    Baton Rouge, La. – As part of the National Fuel Funds Network’s LIHEAP Action Day on August 2, 2011, employees of Entergy Louisiana, LLC and Entergy Gulf States Louisiana, L.L.C. are joining advocates from across the nation in Washington, D.C., to ask Congress for funding to provide low-income families, the elderly and the disabled with critical assistance to help pay energy costs through the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).

    For their part, Entergy employees and community partners are meeting with members of Congress to deliver a critical message from statewide partner charities, service providers, advocacy groups, assistance recipients, elected officials and the Louisiana legislature: Save LIHEAP. 

    LIHEAP is in danger of being slashed in half – from $5.1 billion to $2.6 billion – under the current budget proposals before Congress. The proposed reduction would prove even more detrimental to Louisiana than many other states, translating into a more than 67 percent cut to Louisiana’s LIHEAP allocation. The result would be the elimination of assistance to more than 130,000 Louisianans.

    On June 8, Entergy Louisiana, Entergy Gulf States Louisiana and representatives from low-income advocacy agencies from across the state stood alongside State Sen. Sharon Weston Broome (D-Baton Rouge) at the Louisiana State Capitol to make the same plea to Congress to save LIHEAP.  Senate Concurrent Resolution 33, authored by Broome and co-authored by seven other bi-partisan Louisiana legislators, was passed during the 2011 summer legislative session. SCR 33 authorized Congress to sustain home energy assistance for at-risk Louisianans and declared June 2011 as “Save LIHEAP Month.” 

    “Louisiana, like every state in the nation, is struggling with a crippling and ongoing recession. Meanwhile, governments at all levels face budget deficits that must be overcome,” said Steven Scheurich, Entergy Louisiana and Entergy Gulf States Louisana’s vice president of customer service and external affairs. “But this is no time to cut essential assistance for people struggling to survive. LIHEAP is not an entitlement. It is a true safety net to ensure that our most at-risk groups – the very old, very ill, very young and the working poor who have fallen victim to the national recession – don’t slip even further down the economic ladder. Our state’s broader economic issues can’t be addressed successfully if we are forced to take on the additional societal costs of turning away 130,000 Louisianans in critical need of energy assistance.”

    According to the Louisiana Association of Community Action Partnerships, nationally unemployment is the worst it’s been since World War II at more than 9 percent, and the national poverty rate for 2009 was 14.3 percent. Louisiana had the nation’s second-highest poverty rate, 17.3 percent. Families living below the poverty line spend a disproportionately high percentage – between 11.5 and 40 percent – of their income on energy costs, so they are at greatest risk during times of economic downturn.

    “Each LIHEAP recipient receives an average of $360 in aid annually, and the vast majority receives help only once,” said Lee Griffin, interim president and chief executive officer of the Louisiana State University Foundation and former president and CEO of Bank One. Griffin is joining Scheurich and Morgan Stewart, Entergy Louisiana and Entergy Gulf States Louisiana external affairs manager, for LIHEAP Action Day at the nation’s capitol. “The cost of helping a citizen in need is a particularly small investment when compared to the broader costs to business, consumers and society at large associated with providing help once that person has gotten ill, been evicted or is left homeless. Turning our backs on people who need a relatively small amount of help at a critical juncture makes no societal or economic sense.”

    To make ends meet, 30 percent of those who qualify to receive LIHEAP assistance don’t eat for at least a day, and more than 40 percent do without medical or dental care. Almost one-third can’t make a full mortgage or rent payment, nine percent are evicted or foreclosed upon, and three percent end up in a shelter or homeless.

    “Even funded at the $5.1 billion level, LIHEAP only reaches one in five American households eligible to receive it. If LIHEAP funding is cut by Congress by more than half as currently proposed, it would be devastating for Louisiana. Tens of thousands of eligible low-income Louisiana families would be compelled to make painful and even life-threatening choices between their energy needs and other basic necessities – like food, medicine, rent or mortgage,” said Stewart. “No one should have to make choices like that.”

    Entergy Louisiana, LLC and Entergy Gulf States Louisiana, L.L.C. serve more than one million customers in Louisiana. With operations in southern, central and northeastern Louisiana, the companies are part of Entergy Corporation’s electric system serving 2.7 million customers in Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas.