State Representative Mary Mushinsky, D-Wallingford, testified at a legislative hearing Monday on a pair of bills before the General Assembly's Energy and Technology Committee.

One of the bills, S.B. 450, would exempt buyers of vehicles like electric and fuel cell cars from having to pay Connecticut's sales tax on those purchases through 2014. The proposed legislation would create a fund of up to $10 million through a gross receipts tax on petroleum that would be used to help home and business owners pay for more efficient oil heating burners and other types of equipment.

Another piece of legislation, S.B. 451, would add boilers to the list of heating devices that would be eligible for a state-backed loan program. The purpose of the program is to help make purchase of more efficient equipment more affordable.

"I would like these bills to be combined because many of my constituents live in old housing stock, heated by oil," said Mushinsky, who is show in the photo above. "Without an energy audit followed by furnace replacement and plenty of insulation, they face impossibly high energy bills. People who never applied for heating assistance in their lives applied this year and in 2011 because their small monthly incomes can not keep up."