CITGO FUEL VOUCHERS COME TO GALENA
2-23-07
Tim Bodony (KIYU) 

A second round of fuel vouchers is coming to rural Alaska communities – extending the CITGO free fuel program to more areas of the state.   

Bethel, Galena, Aniak, Hoonah and Gulkana are some of the 16 communities that will now receive vouchers, after originally being passed over, due to an eligibility requirement that 80 percent of a village’s population be Alaska Native. 

The Venezuelan oil company established that formula in conjunction with the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council, as a way to distribute the donated money as widely as possible, while still focusing the support on Alaska Natives.    

Alaska Inter-Tribal Council Executive Director Steve Sumida explains that the latest batch of vouchers – good for 100 gallons of heating fuel – comes from a separate pot of CITGO money, originating in New England. 

Sumida: CITGO is running two programs in Alaska. One is the AITC-Indian Program, which had that 80 percent Alaska Native cutoff.  The other program is a low-income heating oil program, being operated by Citizen’s Energy Company on behalf of CITGO.  Citizen’s Energy is in Massachusetts, and they are running the program in 16 states across the country.  They had excess funds in their program, and CITGO asked them to make some of those funds available to Alaska – approximately 1.2 million dollars.  

A-I-T-C took that money and created vouches for communities with at least 70 percent Alaska Native population, plus or minus 5 percent. 

According to Sumida, about 32 hundred households are eligible for the second wave of vouchers. 

Some of the supplemental money will provide vouchers for some households that were mistakenly left out of the first wave of the program last November.   

Sumida admits that dealing with the ever-changing population of rural Alaska has been a major challenge for implementing the CITGO energy assistance program, and the residency information that AITC used was, in some cases, several years out of date. 

Sumida: the economics of rural Alaska are so horrendous that from month to month there is a depletion of people from rural communities. They are being forced into the urban hubs at an astounding rate. You cant go one month to the next without finding that you have lost households in rural Alaska.

And to eliminate potential fraud or mishandling of the vouchers, Galena residents that have elected to use the voucher will have to sign it, and a Crowley delivery ticket, before receiving the fuel.   

Native regional corporations have gotten involved as an intermediary between the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council, and the village residents that are eligible for the assistance.   

But given that some regional corporations, such as Tanana Chiefs Conference, are still administering the first round of vouchers, the Inter-tribal council decided to eliminate the middle man and send the vouchers directly to fuel venders in the second wave of eligible communities.   

They are also facing a March 14 reporting deadline to Citizen’s Energy in Massachusetts, leaving about 3 weeks for Galena households to claim the voucher. 

Compared to other communities, Sumida says that setting up the CITGO fuel voucher program for Galena has been easy. 

Sumida: we’ve got good partners. [Louden First Chief] Peter Captain is doing a whole lot of legwork in coordinating it.  The fuel vendor has been on the ball from the start.  The lists are done. I think it happened almost overnight.

Captain is also looking ahead to a possible third round of funding, in which community buildings like the tribal office, community hall, and city buildings could receive free heating fuel.  That round of funding would be possible if money goes unspent from the preceding rounds, according to Sumida. 

Every home in Galena is eligible for a voucher, regardless of ethnicity.