WASHINGTON -
In a prepared statement, CUNA President Dan Mica said Sagar is leaving CUNA on "good terms and with very positive feelings about credit unions and the members we serve."
Sagar did not return phone calls seeking comment. Sources said he does not have another job. But Sagar's resignation was a surprise to industry observers, coming after just 16 months on the job, and just four months after the termination of the congressional "revolving door" restrictions that prevented him from lobbying his old colleagues on the House Financial Services Committee for one year.
Sagar's brief tenure was marred by a couple of incidents, including allegations-denied by him and CUNA-that he had violated the revolving- door restrictions by meeting with committee staffers, and more recently by a gag order put on him by Mica on public statements on certain issues. The limits came after remarks Sagar made on the possibility of credit unions being included in a bill on the Community Reinvestment Act were misrepresented by another credit union trade publications, leading to the rare public rebuke by Mica. "The writing was on the wall after that," said one longtime credit union lobbyist who did not want to be identified, of Sagar's separation from CUNA.
With more than 20 years' experience on Capitol Hill, including more than a decade with the Financial Services Committee (formerly the House Banking Committee), Sagar was widely viewed as an expert on financial legislation and his hiring was considered somewhat of a coup in the wake of the departure of CUNA's two senior lobbyists, John McKechnie and Gary Kohn, who went to work at NCUA.
But Sagar has a checkered history with credit unions. He liked to boast that he wrote HR 1151, the landmark 1998 CU Membership Access Act as aid to then Rep. John LaFalce, then ranking Democrat on the banking panel. But he often locked horns with credit unions during the critical campaign to reverse a Supreme Court ruling on multiple group fields of membership, especially when LaFalce supported the bankers' efforts to limit member business lending. Sagar subsequently helped LaFalce write a bill LaFalce introduced in 2002, just as he was retiring from Congress, which would have eased some of the credit union restrictions enacted under HR 1151, including the MBL cap, restrictions of mergers and on select employee groups.
Despite his deep knowledge of credit unions, Sagar's strong partisanship as a Democratic staff member prevented him from joining NCUA as senior aide to then-board member Deborah Matz when the Bush administration would not clear the appointment.
But that partisanship turned out to be an advantage when CUNA hired Republican staffer John Magill as its chief lobbyist to succeed McKechnie and needed a Democrat to fill out its lobbying team. It turned out to be even more advantageous last fall, when the Democrats won control of Congress and the Financial Services Committee.
CUNA said Magill has already begun work on hiring a hiring a successor and that it has several very strong candidates in mind.
