June Advocacy Update
Advancing Communities – We need your videos and news stories!
Was your credit union in the news? Send the link to swaters@yourleague.org so that story can be featured on our Advancing Communities site.
We need your videos about the credit union difference from your employees, members, anyone! We want to feature them on our Advancing Communities site. If you haven’t seen the site yet, you can find it here: https://advancingtncommunities.org.
CULAC’s $30 by the 30th!
CULAC is one of our advocacy movements’ best tools. We’ve seen it in action recently as we are working to participate and support a candidate in the TN-1 and TN Senate elections. I know there’s a lot on everyone’s plate, but the elections are just five short months away! Please consider a donation of $30 or more to the annual $30 by June 30th campaign. Tennessee is currently at about 13% of our CULAC goal for 2020, help us move forward! You can donate here.
Contributions to CULAC are not tax-deductible. All contributions are voluntary and will be used for political purposes. You have the right to refuse to contribute without any reprisal. Guidelines contained herein are merely suggestions. You may contribute more or less than the guidelines suggest, and CUNA will not favor nor disadvantage you by reason of the amount of your contribution or a decision not to contribute.
State Update
The General Assembly in TN has returned from its Covid-19 recess to finish up work before adjourning for the year. Committees began to meet last week’s session is expected to last through the first couple weeks of June.
On the credit union front, neither of the two remaining bills we were watching made the cutoff for the session. The legislature and governor’s office dramatically parred down the number of bills into what they consider to be their top priorities, chief of which is revising the budget.
That means that all of our work on Homestead Exemption will have to restart (absent a new strategy) in the new Assembly in January 2021. The good news here is that the proposed changes to Commercial Lending (a dispute between the contractors and subcontractors) that would have involved financial institutions are also dead for the year. While nothing remains on the credit union front, we’ll keep watching the legislature until they officially adjourn.
Federal Update
This week the House passed HR 7010 a bill to fix some of the provisions of the PPP bill by a vote of 417-1. Two of the key changes made were that the forgiveness minimum went down to 60% from 75% and the period in which to use the funds went from 8 weeks to 24 weeks. Rep. Tim Burchett and Rep. Steve Cohen cosponsored this bill. Please thank them if you live in their districts! We expect the Senate will take up this bill and possibly vote on it this week.
The Tennessee Credit Union League signed onto a letter with CUNA and AACUL asking that SBA and Treasury work to find a more streamlined application for forgiveness of PPP loans for those loans under $350,000. You can read that letter here.
We’ll keep you posted on additional Congressional action and timing as it comes in!
