BEAVERTON, Ore.-The Northwest Credit Union Association has launched a "Say No to Big Banks" campaign to illustrate to the legislature and the Oregon Bankers Association the overwhelming support CUs have from consumers in the state.
Oregon's banks have traditionally been aggressive with pushing taxation for CUs, and the current legislative session is no different, with a trio of anti-credit union bills before lawmakers, including measures to tax CUs and limit member business lending.
"The banks perennially bring this up, and they're usually pretty quickly shut down by the legislature," said Lynn Heider, VP of public relations and communication at the NWCUA. "This year the banks have admitted that they know these bills have no chance of passing, but they're just trying to make some noise. We thought that on behalf of Oregon's 1.4-million credit union members that we would make some noise."
That effort is centered around www.saynotobigbanks.com, an online petition aimed at showing the support credit unions have from both members and non-members in Oregon. Within five days of launching, the petition had garnered more than 800 digital signatures.
Loyal & Understanding
"When you have a poll that shows that 90% of Oregon's registered voters are loyal to credit unions and that another 82% of them not only understand the tax exemption but support it-and a high percentage willing to take action on your behalf and contact legislators-we thought that if we provided a turnkey way for them to do so, they would respond," said Heider, referring to a January poll of registered voters in the state.
Many of Oregon's CUs are promoting the petition on their websites, and the league has also done an online media buy so that ads about the petition are visible on Facebook and sites related to consumer finance. The league also handed out buttons related to the campaign during its Credit Union Day at the state capitol earlier in March.
There is no target number of signatures, but the NWCUA hopes to collect as many as possible and present the petition to the legislature sometime in late spring. Heider noted that there is no formal need to present the petition to lawmakers.
"(Legislators) get it," Heider observed. "There's no formal day planned where we're going to present this, but we know it's going to send a strong message."
The end goal of the petition, said Heider, "is to present the signatures to the legislators as well as to the banking community and say 'This is the support we have. Now can we move on?'"
