House Ways and Means Committee chairman Bill Thomas is not too pleased with the National Credit Union Administration these days.
The California Republican has said that the agency does a poor job of documenting how credit unions meet the needs of low- and moderate-income members, and he has demanded that it start keeping better records.
Now, he is apparently believes the NCUA is not taking his request seriously, and has asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate the agency's "independence and objectivity."
His concerns were triggered by comments made by NCUA board member Gigi Hyland this month to a group of California credit union executives.
According to a report in the March 14 Credit Union Times, Ms. Hyland told the executives that the industry should respond to congressional requests for more information on how it serves low- and moderate-income members by telling "stories of people helping people in a way that appeals to Capitol Hill." But Rep. Thomas said that what Congress wants is hard data, "not a collection of feel-good stories and sound bites."
After getting wind of Ms. Hyland's comments he fired off a strongly worded letter to NCUA chairwoman JoAnn Johnson, saying that Ms. Hyland's remarks confirmed his long-held doubts about the agency's ability to report accurate and unbiased information about the credit unions it regulates.
"We do not need a cheerleader collecting and analyzing information about whether credit unions are fulfilling the goals intended with their tax exemption," he wrote in the March 22 letter.
Ms. Johnson said Friday in a letter to Rep. Thomas that her agency was not ignoring Congress' requests. "Let me state unequivocally that NCUA is entirely committed to responding to your request for information in a complete, accurate, and thorough manner," she wrote.
