CRA rules finally appear; $45M for CDFI Fund
Well, the CDFI Coalition's Joe Akman sent out an action-packed email this afternoon that I hope will appear on the Coalition's website soonish. If you can tear yourself away from the Roberts nomination, he has spotted the following very important items:
- The long-awaited Community Reinvestment Act enforcement revisions have finally emerged from three of the four main banking regulators. As folks following this issue may recall, the Office of Thrift Supervision took the rather radical step quite some time ago of deciding that savings and loans below $1 billion in assets -- which is most of them -- could get the reduced review accorded to "small institutions." The FDIC, Federal Reserve, and Comptroller of the Currency have been dithering ever since about whether to follow OTS' lead, stand pat, or take a midway position. (If you care about such things, there's a nicely detailed procedural history in the preamble to today's draft of the final rules.) The three agencies as of today have decided to take the midway position: a new "intermediate" standard for institutions between $250 million and $1 billion. It's stricter than the OTS rule, but still folks like the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, when they get around to updating their website on this subject, will presumably point out that less enforcement means less of the kind of community investment that entails higher risks, lower profits, or ruffled majority-group sensibilities -- and in the immortal words that Senator Dirksen may not have uttered after all, pretty soon you're talking real money. This was the NCRC's take on the previous stage in the FDIC/OCC/Fed rulemaking process. You can read comments received by the FDIC last spring over here.
- The TT/HUD Senate Appropriations subcommittee markup today picked only $45 million for the Community Development Institutions Fund, which is less than the $55 million the industry had sought, though far more than the Bush Administration recommendation, which had called for no grant programs at all, just a little under $8 million to administer the New Markets Tax Credit.
Also in Mr. Akman's newsletter and of interest to close watchers of the industry: the Community Development Bankers Association and its most noted spokesperson, former CDFI Fund administrator Jeannine Jacokes, have joined the CDFI Coalition.
- The long-awaited Community Reinvestment Act enforcement revisions have finally emerged from three of the four main banking regulators. As folks following this issue may recall, the Office of Thrift Supervision took the rather radical step quite some time ago of deciding that savings and loans below $1 billion in assets -- which is most of them -- could get the reduced review accorded to "small institutions." The FDIC, Federal Reserve, and Comptroller of the Currency have been dithering ever since about whether to follow OTS' lead, stand pat, or take a midway position. (If you care about such things, there's a nicely detailed procedural history in the preamble to today's draft of the final rules.) The three agencies as of today have decided to take the midway position: a new "intermediate" standard for institutions between $250 million and $1 billion. It's stricter than the OTS rule, but still folks like the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, when they get around to updating their website on this subject, will presumably point out that less enforcement means less of the kind of community investment that entails higher risks, lower profits, or ruffled majority-group sensibilities -- and in the immortal words that Senator Dirksen may not have uttered after all, pretty soon you're talking real money. This was the NCRC's take on the previous stage in the FDIC/OCC/Fed rulemaking process. You can read comments received by the FDIC last spring over here.
- The TT/HUD Senate Appropriations subcommittee markup today picked only $45 million for the Community Development Institutions Fund, which is less than the $55 million the industry had sought, though far more than the Bush Administration recommendation, which had called for no grant programs at all, just a little under $8 million to administer the New Markets Tax Credit.
Also in Mr. Akman's newsletter and of interest to close watchers of the industry: the Community Development Bankers Association and its most noted spokesperson, former CDFI Fund administrator Jeannine Jacokes, have joined the CDFI Coalition.
posted by Martha Bridegam at 8:48 PM
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