Happy April, everyone! It’s supposed to be spring but the forecast looks like we may be in the middle of another winter storm about the time this newsletter hits your inbox. Good grief! Enough already!
You’re probably tired of hearing from me about the 68th Assembly of the North Dakota Legislature. Not many weeks have gone by when I haven’t implored members to reach out to their legislators requesting they vote with us on one issue or another. In my limited tenure with ICBND, this has easily been the busiest as it relates to bills affecting community banking. We’ve been effective in turning back, or amending to satisfaction, most of the problematic bills. Unfortunately, we’re not even close to being done. In fact, we are currently in the throws of possibly the most problematic proposed North Dakota legislation in the past decade as it relates to community banking.
That bill is Senate Bill 2266. It was brought by the credit unions and originally sought to gut the field of membership rules in Century Code by allowing pretty much unfettered expansion. As amended in the
Senate, it is still extremely problematic as it seeks to expand the field of membership of any credit union main office to 125 miles from the current 75-mile radius. That’s a near tripling of the service area of every state-chartered credit union – there are 19 of them. It passed by one vote in the Senate. We need it to fail in the House and we need your help to do that. The bill was heard in the House Industry, Business and Labor Committee yesterday. It will be the subject of Committee work again the week of April 3rd. It could hit the House floor for vote as early as late that same week or the week of April 10. Please contact your Representatives from the following roster ND House of Representatives and ask them to vote “NO” on SB 2266!
Happy shoveling,
Barry
