WASHINGTON -
The 69-year-old Kanjorski, the credit union champion who also wrote the landmark 1998 CU Membership Access Act, was resting comfortably in Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital. Aides said the surgery was scheduled after a routine check-up and was not the result of a heart attack.
But the ailment will prevent new co-sponsors of the bill, formally known as the CU Regulatory Improvements Act, or CURIA, from being added to the more than 100 co-sponsors who endorsed the measure in the last Congress because congressional rules require the chief sponsor to personally approve new co-sponsors, and Kanjorski is not expected to return to work until after the April congressional recess. In the last Congress 126 House members signed on as co-sponsors of the bill.
Still, introduction of the new CURIA-which looks almost identical to the old CURIA-was hailed as a major step by the credit union lobby, which had hoped to have the bill introduced before CUNA's Governmental Affairs Conference last month. CUNA President Dan Mica said they are already working to round up as many co-sponsors as they can to add to the 11 already signed on with Kanjorski, so when the Pennsylvania Democrat returns he can add them to the bill.
CUNA is talking with members of the Senate Banking Committee in hopes of getting a companion bill introduced in the Senate, said Mica.
The bill includes five major provisions-four of which were in the version of the bill that died before being debated in the last Congress. They are: enactment of a risk-based capital system for credit unions; an increase in the limit on member business loans from the current 12.25% of assets to 20%; allowing federal credit unions to retain their select groups after converting to community charters and allowing all credit union charter types to add underserved communities to their fields of membership.
The proposal also includes two provisions aimed at making it harder for credit unions to convert to mutual savings banks, including requiring at least 30% of eligible members vote on the conversion-a threshold few converts have accomplished-and requiring that members be allowed to debate the proposal in a special meeting before the board votes.
Brad Thaler, senior lobbyist for NAFCU, said the group's immediate goal is to increase the number of co-sponsors on CURIA to demonstrate broad-based support for the bill, then to convince lawmakers to hold hearings, something lawmakers refused to do in each of the last two Congresses. One good sign is that among the original 12 sponsors, including Kanjorski, is Carolyn Maloney, the New York Democrat who chairs the Financial Institutions Subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee, where the bill will originate.
While the bill is currently restricted to the five main areas, both CUNA and NAFCU see the possibility that other provisions could be added in the future. "This bill represents what the (credit union) system sees as politically feasible and what the two sponsors felt was politically feasible and what NCUA felt was politically feasible," said Mica. "But in a heartbeat, it there was something else that came up we wouldn't hesitate one bit to try to add it on."
