Ailing Lawmaker Stalls CURIA Progress

WASHINGTON – This week’s surgery for Pennsylvania Congressman Paul Kanjorski will slow down progress on the newly introduced CU Regulatory Improvements Act, as congressional rules require the author of any bill to personally approve the addition of any co-sponsors to his measure, credit union lobbyists concurred yesterday. Kanjorski, the chief sponsor of both CURIA and of HR 1151, the landmark 1998 CU Membership Access Act, is recovering in a Boston hospital after successful triple heart bypass surgery. As a result, the more than 100 other House members who signed on to the bill in the last Congress will have to wait for Kanjorski’s expected return to work, after the April congressional recess, to add their names to the bill, according to CUNA President Dan Mica. Eleven other House members have signed on to the initial bill as co-sponsors, including Kanajorski’s partner on HR 1151, Steve LaTourette, of Ohio, and New York’s Carolyn Maloney, chairman of the Financial Institutions Subcommittee of the Financial Services Committee, where the bill will originate. The bill would: enact a risk-based capital system for credit unions; increase the limit on member business loans and make it tougher for credit unions to convert to mutual savings banks, among other things.