Mo.'s State Charters Put In Limbo

Operations at at least 10 state chartered credit unions, some of them the biggest in Missouri, have been put into limbo by the state court's ruling striking down the state's community chartering rules. The Missouri CU Commission, which has approved all of the community grants struck down by the court, ordered the state's credit union supervisor last week to draft a new field of membership rule for community charters.

But that process is expected to take up to four months to accomplish, throwing operations for some of the state's biggest credit unions into disarray. They include Telecom CU, Vantage CU, St. Louis Postal CU, First Community CU and Alliance CU.

The Cole Superior Court ruled March 26 that expansive community charters granted these and other state CUs were illegal because communities encompassing millions of people and numerous counties did not qualify under the definition of a "well-defined local community, neighborhood, or rural district," as is immortalized in both NCUA's and the state's law. it is unclear whether the state regulator will appeal the ruling by the Cole County Court.

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