Telephone Lifeline Programs: Expanding the Enrollment

1
Telephone Lifeline ProgramsExpanding the
Enrollment

• Roger D. Colton
• Fisher, Sheehan Colton
• National Low-Income Energy Consortium
• June 2003

2
Express Lane EligibilityPrimary Way to
Increase Enrollment

• LIHEAP
• Food Stamps
• School lunch/school breakfast
• SLMB (health care)
• PAAD (prescription drug assistance)
• WIC (Women Infants Children)
• Unemployment

3
Dangers of automatic enrollment

• Exclusion of nonparticipants (Iowa)
• Hispanics underrepresented in
• 13 of 18 CAAs (2002)
• 12 of 18 CAAs (2001)

4
Dangers of automatic enrollment

• Exclusion of nonparticipants (Iowa)
• Hispanics underrepresented
• Of 75,000 LIHEAP recipients, additional 4,400
  Hispanics would have been needed to reflect
  their incidence in population.
• Increased Hispanic participation of 230 needed
  to reflect population.

5
Not a reflection on Outreach Efforts!

• Consider the NRRI Report
• Survey results show that when those of Hispanic
  origin look for help, close to half think first
  of friends of relatives.

6
Not a reflection on Outreach Efforts!

• Consider the NRRI Report
• The results could suggest that utilities and
  commissions need to assess their outreach to
  Hispanic customers to inform them of programs
  like Lifeline and Link-up. Nontraditional
  consumer education such as grass-roots campaigns
  might be more appropriate for hard-to-reach
  groups such as Hispanics.

7
Conclusion

• Automatic outreach is a necessary component to
  LIHEAP outreach,
• BUT
• cannot be exclusive entrance into Lifeline or
  Link-up.

8
For more information

• roger_at_fsconline.com