You've already got the right answer(s) for how to pull the hash into your script. But after a recent Perl Mongers meeting, I thought it worth mentioning the following:

If you're using that hash to handle configuration information, you may find it useful (and more powerful) to use tilly's new Template::ExpandHash module. This will not be a drop-in solution for your existing strategy, but rather, a new way of looking at using hashes for configuration data. It's a well thought out module. His presentation to LAPM was really interesting. The slide presentation can be found here: http://elem.com/~btilly/template-hashexpand/#title-slide.