The same rule applies to a starving federal program and a stray dog: Feed it and it will follow you home. That's exactly what will happen if well-meaning lawmakers decide to supplement inadequate federal fuel assistance with money from the state's estimated $82 million surplus.

The federal government will gladly hand over responsibility for keeping the poor and near-poor from freezing -or a big share of it - to the states. But in many years, states won't have a surplus to draw on.

Last year, 30,144 New Hampshire households received fuel assistance averaging $575. Since then, the cost of heating oil has gone up a buck a gallon. Natural gas prices have doubled since June, and electricity prices are scheduled to increase by 10 percent. It now takes $940 to buy fuel that cost $575 last year.

Last month, the National Energy Assistance Directors' Association published its look at how low-income households cope with high fuel bills. Nearly a quarter of them failed to make a rent or mortgage payment, a third skipped medical treatment and 20 percent went without food for at least a day. That was at last year's prices.

New Hampshire isn't alone in racing to tap its coffers to pay for fuel. Maine, Vermont, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Maryland are among the states either chipping in or planning to do so.

Charitable? Prudent in the face of the federal government's slow-motion response to Hurricane Katrina? Yes.

Smart? No.

Poor people shouldn't have to choose between heat and food or medical care. People already turn to welfare offices when the federal money runs out - or because they did not apply to the program in the first place - so local taxpayers already pick up some of the cost of winter heat for those who can't afford it. And each year, it seems, officials have to beg for more federal Low Income Heating Assistance Program revenue for the state.

But New Hampshire shouldn't let the burden of providing fuel assistance pass from federal to state government. Like food stamps, fuel assistance is a federal program. It should stay that way.

What state governments should be doing is leaning hard on their congressional delegations to push the federal government to finance the program at levels sufficient to meet the need. They should also demand that the federal government smarten up and run the program as oil dealers do.

New Hampshire's energy office starts its fuel assistance process in July, but the agency never knows until fall or winter how much federal money it will get. What it does know is that there won't be enough to go around. Every year, it seems, states are forced to drag out the specter of shivering children and frozen seniors and beg for supplemental aid. By the time people actually get their fuel assistance money, energy prices are sky-high. That makes no sense.

Lawmakers also know - or should -that although nearly 34,000 households applied for aid last year, at least 100,000 more were eligible but failed to apply. This year, who knows? Oil at $2.62 per gallon, Tuesday's price, could lead to a dramatic rise in applications.

It might make sense, as some lawmakers have proposed, for the state to buy at least some fuel assistance oil in advance when prices are low and store it for winter, although that proposal has problems of its own.

It would be better for the state to do what many households do - pre-buy oil from existing dealers. But that won't solve the problem, and it won't help the 18 percent of the state's households that heat with natural gas. Adequate federal aid will.

Monitor editorial