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The low-income utility assistance programs in Arizona might be looking for assistance themselves.

An administrative error in the federally funded Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program — known as LIHEAP — is causing Arizona to get about $1 million less than anticipated this fiscal year, meaning about 4,500 fewer families will get help with their cooling and heating bills this year than last.

Adding to that misfortune, the need for such assistance is growing because of high gas prices, high grocery prices and the economy in general.

And add that to the fact that only 4 percent of the 619,000 households eligible for LIHEAP were being served by the program before the mistake.

Then factor in a federal funding formula that appears to favor cold-weather states.

What you get in the end is a lot of unmet need and a lot of people who will be very cold this winter.

"We get the least amount per capita anyway of any state, including D.C.," said Cynthia Zwick, executive director of the Arizona Community Action Association, a state organization that promotes economic self-sufficiency for low-income people.

The shortfall happened because the appropriations act that sets LIHEAP funds each year neglected to authorize funding for two parts of LIHEAP this fiscal year — the so-called leveraging program and the Residential Energy Assistance Challenge Program (REACH) grant program, according to a memo issued to all the states by the U.S. Administration for Children and Families, a part of the Department of Health and Human Services.

The leveraging program rewards states that do a good job of securing bill-assistance money that's not federally funded, while the REACH grants are awarded based on an application process.

Although those two aspects of LIHEAP weren't specifically authorized in this year's appropriations act, $26.7 million was still set aside for them, so the government rolled the money back into its main LIHEAP block-grant program and distributed it based on the funding formula for that program.

And that formula apparently favors cold-weather states, leaving Arizona on the short end of the stick when it came to getting any of that money.

In an Aug. 20 letter to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt and the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, all five Arizona Corporation Commissioners asserted Arizona's need for more funds before the end of the fiscal year.

"To date, Arizona has received only $8.1 million of the total $2.57 billion in (fiscal year 2008) funds disbursed thus far nationwide," the commissioners wrote.

They went on to note that "Tennessee and Missouri, with comparable populations to Arizona, have received $29.1 million and $56.9 million respectively."

The ACC letter also said Arizona utilities are reporting a 30 percent to 40 percent increase in requests for bill assistance.

Tucson Electric Power Co. has no way of tracking such requests, said spokesman Joe Salkowski. And the number of disconnects through June of this year was actually down slightly from the same time last year.

Even so, local aid agencies are seeing a difference.

At Pima County Community Action Agency — which helps people get LIHEAP assistance — there were about 13 percent more calls for help this August than in August of last year, said program manager Norma Gallegos.

Those figures include all calls for help, but utility requests represent a good chunk of them, she said.

"If TEP gets the rate increase, we're probably going to see a lot more people coming in," Gallegos said, referring to TEP's pending case.

Meanwhile, Gov. Janet Napolitano also has weighed in, sending her own letter July 30 to the Office of Management and Budget, the White House budgeting agency, asking the body to give more weight to warm-weather states.

In her missive, she noted that in July alone, Phoenix recorded 15 days with temperatures at or above 110 degrees, and she cited Arizona Department of Health Services statistics that there were 28 deaths in Arizona in 2007 due to heat.

She also mentioned 20 deaths the same year in our state due to cold.

That paradox is one thing that makes Arizona unique, Salkowski said.

Though we are typically considered a warm-weather state, the northern part of Arizona experiences extreme cold in the winter, he said.

TEP and its parent, UniSource Energy Corp., have also written letters, lobbied and talked to members of Congress about the shortchange, he said.

"Our interest is on behalf of our customers. We want our customers to have full access to the federal assistance that is available to them," Salkowski said.

Meanwhile, the company will work as much as possible with customers who call and say they are having trouble with their bills, he said.

For her part, Zwick suspects that there will be no additional funding this year to make up for the government's error.

More than a half-million families are eligible for LIHEAP aid in Arizona — the income threshold is 150 percent of the federal poverty level — and 4 percent of them are being served, she said.

"That number is going to drop even further because we're losing this other money," Zwick said.