Board Ouster Bid Advances at Lafayette FCU

KENSINGTON, Md. – Angry members of Lafayette FCU said they have collected enough member signatures on a petition to force a vote on recall of the entire board of directors, which was forced last week to withdraw its bid to convert to a savings bank. Scott Stiens, who helped lead the fight against the bank quest, said member support for the board recall has grown in the days since the credit union announced it was withdrawing its application to convert charters, helping them to easily exceed the 750 signatures required for a special meeting. “We want to make sure we have more because we know they’re going to challenge some of them,” Stiens told The Credit Union Journal, of the Lafayette management and board who are fighting for their survival. Lafayette bylaws require the board to call a special meeting within 30 days of receiving a request by 750 members or more. Stiens said members angry over the failed bank conversion plan to field their own slate for the board so that they could immediately be seated if the current board is ousted at a special meeting. In one recent case, directors at DFCU Financial skirted a special vote on their recall by claiming their ouster would leave the credit union critically without leadership after that credit union’s ill-fated conversion to bank. That ploy has succeeded in holding off angry members of that $2 billion credit union through challenges in both the federal and state courts, so far. Stiens also said Lafayette members would insist that the special meeting be held in a location convenient for members, rather the remote site where the special meeting culminating the vote to convert was held.