MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) – Vermont and neighboring states are getting less money in emergency federal home heating aid than they did last year, even though fuel prices are up sharply.

The drop in funding is the result of the formula used to distribute $100 million in emergency funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program that the White House released last week, said Rep. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt.

Relatively warm-weather states like Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia got nearly as much or slightly more money than the $680,000 Vermont received. Nearly $12,000 in emergency heating assistance went to Hawaii.

“The way they did it was on the regular formula, rather than addressing the real emergency,” Sanders said.

That is contrary to emergency energy assistance distributed in past years. Last January Vermont received $1 million. Warm-weather states have traditionally been heavily favored when emergency funds are released during summer heat waves to help people pay for air conditioning, a Sanders aide said.

During a July heat wave in 2000, the government released $41.75 million in emergency home energy assistance; more than $36 million of that was targeted to eight southern states.

Of the money released last week, Maine got $1.6 million and New Hampshire got $913,000.

All told, Maine has received $27 million in federal heating aid this year and has kicked in $5 million. With an additional $5.5 million from a special deal with the Venezuelan oil company Citgo, the state has $37.5 million to devote to heating aid, said Dan Simpson of the Maine State Housing Authority, which administers the program.

That’s up from a $30.5 million total last year, but really amounts to level funding, given the higher costs for heating fuel this year, Simpson said.

The $913,000 New Hampshire got last week was down from $1.4 million in a similar payment from the federal government last year. Counting the emergency money, New Hampshire’s total aid this winter is $16.4 million compared to $18.3 million last winter, said Celeste Lovett, manager of the state fuel assistance program.

Federal assistance to Vermont for this year has totaled about $11.6 million, said Betsey Forrest, deputy commissioner of Vermont’s Department of Children and Families. She said the state has contributed $10.2 million of its own funds.

Sanders on Tuesday wrote to President Bush, asking that when the next $100 million batch of emergency funds is released for the program, as is expected in the near future, it be done “with a sensible funding formula that targets the regions of the United States that are most in need.”

He said he was contacting other northern-state lawmakers in an effort to build pressure for distributing the remaining funds according to a more favorable formula.

Sanders had said last week he was disappointed that Bush had released only half of the $200 million available for emergency funds.

But Tim Searles, executive director of the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity, a regional anti-poverty agency, said, “I’m actually pleased that only $100 million of it got released if they’re going to use this lousy formula.”

He added, “The White House released money but made no effort to release it to states where people are facing heating emergencies. … we have never received this little money in an emergency contingency release.”

The issue is raised against the backdrop of home heating fuel prices that are sharply higher than they were last year and were even higher during the late summer and early fall when many people locked in a price for the winter under fuel dealers’ budget plans.

Forrest said the distribution formula was tied to prices for three heating fuels: oil, natural gas and propane.

“From a purely Vermont point of view, it would be nice if they targeted the cold weather states more than they do,” Forrest said. “But I really don’t know much about people’s situations in other states. People in Georgia and Alabama I’m sure have to buy heat to some extent.”

Forrest said the bulk of the money released last week, as well as most of any further releases of emergency funding under the program, would be used to repay some of the $3.2 million that the state took from its General Fund during the fall to boost its contribution to low-income heating assistance.