AUGUSTA (AP) – Despite agreement that action is needed to aid Mainers beset by historically high energy prices, exactly what steps to take – and when – must still be worked out by Gov. John Baldacci and the lame-duck Legislature.

There’s no shortage of ideas, but for the time being the approach in Augusta is to try to do more with resources already available and programs already in place.

State leaders are also looking to the federal government, although late-term inertia may be even more pronounced there.

“I think all of us realize that this problem is way bigger than Maine,” state Senate President Beth Edmonds, D-Freeport, said Thursday after a closed-door meeting of Democratic House and Senate leaders with Baldacci.

Formal report

The governor is awaiting the formal transmittal of a report with recommendations from a Pre-Emergency Energy Task Force he established last November.

A draft of the report, characterized as “very preliminary” by Director John Kerry of the state Office of Energy Independence and Security, lays out dozens of broad proposals and specific initiatives, with costs ranging from negligible to enormous.

Baldacci, just returned from a New England governors’ session in Boston that focused on energy and preparing to head off to a national governors’ gathering in Philadelphia where the agenda is also heavy on the same topic, said it will be the citizenry and not the government of Maine that will have to take the lead.

Good neighbors needed

“It is going to be a very hard winter,” he told reporters.

Baldacci said civic and church groups, community organizations, businesses and volunteers could all help to reduce energy consumption and curtail costs.

“Information is critical. Education is critical,” he said.

Record-high crude oil prices have sent gasoline costs soaring and home heating oil costs are expected to hit record levels this winter. Wholesale fuel oil costs have increased from $2.57 a gallon last December to more than $4 a gallon, according to the Energy Information Administration.

“When you see heating oil prices in the $4.60’s and $4.70’s in July, that’s unprecedented,” said Kerry, who is chairing the Baldacci task force.

About 80 percent of Maine households use oil for heating.

On Wednesday in Boston, New England governors said they are sending letters to President Bush, the presidential candidates, U.S. House and Senate leaders and their congressional delegations asking for an increase in the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. To fully fund the program would cost nearly $1 billion, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said.

On Thursday in Washington, a bipartisan group of senators from cold-weather states criticized plans to cut the federal program helping low-income families make their homes more energy efficient.

Signers of a letter to leaders of the Appropriations Committee included Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry of Massachusetts, John Sununu of New Hampshire, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Bernard Sanders of Vermont.

According to the Maine task force, heating and transportation fuel costs have increased 100 percent in the last five years.

“Since Maine families and businesses are spending nearly $8 billion on fossil fuels, are 99.9 percent dependent on petroleum products to fuel their transportation vehicles and are 80 percent dependent on oil to heat their homes, the state and private industry must be ready to assist those in need as more and more Mainers are no longer able to afford the fossil fuels that have traditionally been more affordable and readily available,” the task force’s draft report says.

Some proposed steps are administrative. Baldacci, for instance, has just unveiled a new energy assistance Web page for consumers and businesses.

Other ideas are vastly more ambitious. A long-term program to weatherize 477,000 single-family homes is pegged with a borrowing and subsidy cost of $3 billion.

More modest but still substantial efforts also are envisioned. The task force’s draft report suggests that “Warm Kits” be made available to neighborhood teams with the goal of winterizing up to 5,000 Maine homes in 2008. Estimated cost: $300,000.

Following their State House meeting on Thursday, Baldacci and ranking Democratic lawmakers played down the likelihood of a special legislative session on energy without flatly ruling one out.

“It we’re talking about weatherization, there’s a lot of stuff that can be done now,” said House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, D-North Haven.

Improved coordination of various state agencies and the services they can provide could be the key for now, Baldacci said.

Outlining an overall aim, Baldacci said, “it’s going to be less oil.”

Noting that the nation has endured energy shocks before, he said this time should prompt permanent changes.

“It’s refreshing in a way that we’re finally going to change, but it’s challenging, too,” he said.

Maine lawmakers have adjourned and are not scheduled to reconvene. The new Legislature to be elected in November assembles in December.