THE HAVE-NOTS Search continues for fix on heating shutoffs BY BRIAN C. JONES

Shelton says he remains hopeful that with all the attention being paid to shutoffs, a consensus will emerge. "I think we are on track to change the system," he says. "I hate to think we will go another year just trying to put Band-Aids on."

State House powerbrokers continue to focus on a permanent plan to ensure that all Rhode Islanders have heat in the winter, but finding the money to pay for it remains a key hurdle.

House Speaker William J. Murphy met with Henry Shelton, director of the George Wiley Center, which works on anti-poverty issues, in late January, and Shelton says he’s been promised a similar session with Senate President Joseph A. Montalbano. Meanwhile, Senator William A. Walaska, chairman of the Committee on Financial Service, Technology and Regulatory Issues, was scheduled to hold the second of two hearings on the issue in as many weeks on Thursday, January 27.

At the first session on January 20, the panel heard from a variety of speakers, including the Reverend John E. Holt, executive minister of the Rhode Island State Council of Churches, who heads a broad-based committee on behalf of Governor Donald L. Carcieri that’s been looking at the issue since last fall (see "Carcieri’s compassionate gambit," News, January 7). While lack of heat for the state’s poorest families is a perennial subject, the focus of so much attention indicates more progress might be made this year than in the recent past.

But the real issue has always been money, because most people familiar with the issue believe the only real solution to keep oil flowing to furnaces, and to prevent natural gas and electrical shutoffs, are subsidies to thousands of households who simply cannot afford to pay all of their heat bills.

Holt, appearing before the Walaska committee, said a key step will be to nail down the estimated costs, as well as to craft a funding mechanism fair to energy providers and customers, who might be asked to pay for surcharges on wholesale oil or utilities. There are some preliminary figures, Holt told the committee, but he quickly added that it would be "foolish even to share them with you" because the estimates "are just not reliable."

In the past, subsidy advocates have said even a limited energy assistance plan would require $11 million in new money to supplement funds currently available from the federal government and other sources.

Clearly, sticker shock is the biggest obstacle to a solution.

One person familiar with the thinking of some State House leaders notes, "This is a tough budget year," because for the third year in a row, current spending rates and revenue projections indicate an overall budget deficit. "We just don’t have the money, as much as we would like to help."

Shelton himself thinks a workable plan would be a one percent surcharge on gas and utility rates, which he believes would raise as much as $13 million, and that untapped utility funds could inject millions of more dollars, both to provide subsidies to low-income households, as well as to help them pay off big back bills. The state Public Utilities Commission rejected this kind of plan for the last two years, and bills proposing the same thing never made it out of legislative committee.

Holt did not say what his panel might recommend, although he did tell the Senate committee that a solution will probably require legislation from the General Assembly.