Matz Departure Will Leave A Board Of One

Deborah Matz resigned last week from the NCUA Board, effective Sept. 30, which will leave just NCUA Chairman JoAnn Johnson as the lone member of the three-member panel.

Matz, whose six-year term officially expired Aug. 2, said she was resigning to pursue other career opportunities. Usually, NCUA Board members stay through the end of their term and serve as so-called holdovers until a successor is confirmed by the Senate.

Johnson said she sees no problem in serving by herself, as she expects at least one, and maybe two additional colleagues to join her shortly. A Republican, Rodney Hood, an executive with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has been nominated by President Bush and is awaiting the necessary confirmation by the Senate. And the Senate Banking Committee recently received paperwork for what is expected to be the nomination of long-time credit union operative Gigi Hyland, a Democrat, to the other vacancy on the board.

Hyland has lots of credit union experience. She is currently general counsel for Empire Corporate FCU in Albany, N.Y., and served before that with the Association of Corporate CUs. Gigi worked for her father Gerry Hyland's, and mother, Carmine Hyland's Alexandria, Va., law practice, Hyland & Hyland, which had a large credit union clientele. Gerry Hyland's political connections as a longtime Democrat in suburban Washington, D.C.'s Fairfax County, are being credited for her consideration for the NCUA Board.

There is some recent precedent for a single person sitting on the three-member board. That was in 2001 when Dennis Dollar was the only sitting member. Dollar convened, then adjourned (unanimously, I might add) a monthly open meeting of the board because for him to act unilaterally might have caused some controversy. He did, however, act by himself in closed board session on a conservatorship of a troubled credit union because it was an urgent matter.

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