ALBANY -- Anticipating federal cutbacks in home heating aid for low-income households, New York state took steps this fall to make its allocated aid dollars stretch further.
Anthony Farmer, spokesman for the state Office of Temporary Disability Assistance, says the maximum benefit per household for the 2011-12 winter heating season was reduced from $700 to $500.
Farmer said benefits were started in mid-November, two weeks later than usual, and will end in mid-March. In most years, there's enough money to keep the program going well into spring.
The state received $521 million in federal heating aid funds last winter. The Obama administration has proposed cutting money for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program in half, to about $2.5 billion nationwide. House and Senate bills would cut it to $3.4 or $3.6 billion.
Onondaga County's Department of Aging and Youth Commissioner Lisa Alford says HEAP program signups are underway and there is still money available to seniors. Alford says the money won't last as long as it did last year, and it's taking longer to process requests.
(Information from the Associated Press was used in this report).
