Jason Strong of Strong Propane Services in Hebron fills tanks at Community Credit Union in Turner on Feb. 20. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services gutted the workforce of a federal program that provides heating and cooling assistance to low-income residents in Maine and nationwide, officials said, leaving the fate of the program uncertain as energy prices are expected to rise.

While the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program remains in effect, its staff has been let go, leaving concerns over how the program will be operated and funds allocated. The layoffs are among the up to 10,000 terminations of DHHS staffers Tuesday, part of a massive effort to reduce the federal workforce in the name of efficiency.

Roughly 51,000 households in Maine rely on the program, said a spokesperson for Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-1st District.

Maine received more than $37.5 million in LIHEAP funding for the 2025 fiscal year, Sen. Susan Collins’ office announced in October. Local Native American tribes were given just over $1.4 million.

 

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The program is open to households earning 60% or less of the state median income, according to DHHS. For a four-person household, the maximum income was estimated to be around $67,000 annually, but the Maine State Housing Authority encourages households making more than that to apply, as certain expenses can be deducted.

Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, said states have already received about 90% of their funding for 2025, with the remaining 10% promised in the continuing resolution approved last month.

“So we’re fortunate in that sense. The remaining 10%, though, is equally important,” Wolfe said on a phone call Tuesday afternoon. “The program is running, the question is when will Maine receive the remaining 10% of the funds. No one knows now because there’s no office to administer (them).”

Wolfe said there is currently “no reason to think that we will not get the money” but cautioned that the mass firing is unprecedented, leaving the next steps unclear.

The LIHEAP office is relatively small, Wolfe said. He estimated its staff included about 20 people.

What “efficiency” is achieved by firing everyone in Maine whose job is to help Mainers afford heating oil when it’s cold?

— Congressman Jared Golden (@RepGolden) April 1, 2025

Those staff members typically act as liaisons between the federal government and individual states, which administer their own local programs. They deal mostly in oversight, auditing and ensuring payments are made, he said.

Maine’s program is relatively robust compared to other states, Wolfe said. The state partners with 10 organizations that directly serve and field questions from local communities. Maine began placing new applicants on a waiting list last week, as available funding began to dry out, according to MaineHousing.

Pingree called the layoffs “stupid” and “incredibly cruel” in a video posted on social media. She said the cuts likely signal a desire to cut the entire program, which still has hundreds of millions of dollars left to distribute this year.

“What kind of misguided DOGE billionaire thinks that people don’t need help getting through a cold winter?” she said.

The layoffs come one day before President Donald Trump’s long-touted tariffs on imports, including the Canadian energy and heating oil on which many Mainers rely, Pingree said.

Rep. Jared Golden, D-2nd District, derided the decision in a post on social media.

“What ‘efficiency’ is achieved by firing everyone in Maine whose job is to help Mainers afford heating oil when it’s cold?” Golden wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

A spokesperson for Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said his office was unable to independently confirm reports about the cuts. But King hopes Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will agree to testify before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee next week.

A spokesperson for Collins said she has been a longtime supporter of LIHEAP “and the critical financial assistance it provides to lower-income families” during the cold months, adding that it was unclear how or whether the staffing cuts would impact its administration.

Asked to confirm the LIHEAP cuts and provide details into how the program might move forward without a staff, a DHHS spokesperson referred questions to a statement and fact-sheet issued by the department last week, as well as a pair of social media posts by Kennedy.

“This is a difficult moment for all of us at HHS. Our hearts go out to those who have lost their jobs. But the reality is clear: what we’ve been doing isn’t working,” Kennedy said on X. He said the cuts would not impact services, and the department will be consolidated from 28 divisions to 15 and 10 regional offices to five.

None of the written statements appeared to mention the heating assistance program directly. The spokesperson did not reply to a follow-up request for clarification.

In a statement published Wednesday, MaineHousing said it was still expecting to receive the remaining 10% of its fiscal year 2025 funds but was “very concerned” about the staffing cuts.

“At this point, we don’t know the federal administration’s plan for the program for the long term, and we’ll be working with our congressional delegation to get those answers,” Director Dan Brennan said in a written statement.

This story was updated at 2:41 p.m. Wednesday to include a statement by MaineHousing.