NEW YORK - A day after Comptroller of the Currency John D. Hawke Jr. advised bankers to quit challenging the credit union industry's tax exemption, community bankers pledged to redouble their efforts to fight it.
Earl D. McVicker, the chairman and chief executive officer at the $214 million-asset Central Bank and Trust Co. in Hutchinson, Kan., said bankers wrote 15,000 letters to lawmakers last year protesting credit unions' tax-exempt status and recent expansion of powers. He also urged bankers to lobby even more aggressively in the next year.
"It's really hard to see what the public-policy purpose is for giving credit unions a leg up on banks like ours," he said Tuesday at the American Bankers Association's annual convention in New York.
Mr. McVicker, who is the ABA's vice chairman, narrated a slide show featuring photographs taken by bankers of headquarters buildings of large credit unions and advertisements of credit unions that offer membership "to anyone who breathes" in their service areas. Credit unions are using their tax exemption to build stately headquarters and to undercut banks on rates, according to Mr. McVicker.
On Monday, Mr. Hawke told bankers at the convention that there is little appetite on Capitol Hill for removing credit unions' tax exemption. Instead, he advised them to pursue more realistic regulatory and tax relief.
