TriStar Advocacy Update – April 8, 2021

Nashville

After months of hustle and bustle in the state legislature, credit union business is beginning to head for a conclusion. The much discussed interchange legislation, thanks to so many of you, was defeated for this year in both committees of record. While it will certainly be back, its defeat allows us to focus our remaining time on passing our Homestead Exemption bill.

Homestead has now passed both committees of record and is awaiting the Committee on Calendar to schedule its time for a floor vote. This has been a multi-year effort and we will remain at it to ensure that this bill finally gets across the finish line.

We’re anticipating the General Assembly to close down in 5-6 weeks from now, though as always with legislative business, you never know what might happen next. As always, we’ll be there to keep credit unions front of mind for lawmakers.

Washington, DC

1) Victory! SCOTUS rules in favor of CUNA’s position on ATDS definition – The Supreme Court issued an Opinion in Facebook v. Duiguid adopting a more narrow definition of an “automatic telephone dialing system” in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). CUNA had filed an amicus brief urging this ruling by the Court. The Court stated that adopting the broad definition sought be Duguid would mean nearly all cellphones are autodialers subject to TCPA limitations. This 9-0 decision is a victory for credit unions and their ability to communicate important information to their members.

2) CFPB Rescinds COVID-19 Policy Statements – The CFPB is rescinding seven policy statements issued last year to provide temporary flexibilities to financial institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Bureau is also rescinding its 2018 bulletin on supervisory communications and replacing it with a revised bulletin describing its use of matters requiring attention (MRAs) to effectively convey supervisory exceptions. For details on these rescissions click here to visit CUNA’s summary .

3) Member Expulsion Legislation – Congressman Tom Emmer (MN-06) and Congressman Ed Perlmutter (CO-07) introduced bipartisan legislation that updates and provides a clear process for federal credit unions to expel a member. This bill allows for a vote of the board to expel a member, rather than the entire membership. It does allow for a request for a hearing by the expelled member within 15 days of receipt of notification of expulsion. We know this is something many of our credit unions have talked to us about before and something we worked on at GAC in 2020. We are pleased with this legislation and will be reaching out to our delegation to ask that they cosponsor. To see the text of the bill, click here.

4) Loan Maturity Limits – S. 762 has been introduced by Senators Tim Scott (R-SC) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) to increase the loan maturity limit for federal credit unions from 15 years to 20 years. We will be reaching out to Senators Blackburn and Hagerty to ask that they sign on and support this legislation.

TriStar Advocacy Update – April 8, 2021

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