Pub. 2 2012-2013 Issue 1

6 O V E R A C E N T U R Y : B U I L D I N G B E T T E R B A N K S - H E L P I N G C O L O R A D A N S R E A L I Z E D R E A M S A Word From CBA... Elections Impact Your Personal Career Rewards (Compensation & Satisfaction) We all know that elections impact our daily lives. But many do not realize the extent to which elections impact our careers. Our personal compensation and satisfaction (or frustration) that our jobs bring to us are directly impacted by this November’s elections. In Colorado we face critical choices between candidates and on ballot issues. Regretfully Colorado has the most liberal laws in the U.S. in terms of allowing citizen initiatives to be put on the ballot. Among many potential topics for this fall’s ballot are three specifically related to banking. All three are proposed amendments to the Colorado Constitution making them permanent and untouchable by the Legislature. Initiatives #94 and #95 would create a state owned bank, and authorize local governments to create their own banks. The proponents have worded it so that the banks would not be FDIC insured in an effort to avoid Federal regulation. They don’t understand how futile and undesirable this is. Both of these are unworkable concepts that are poorly thought out and crudely worded. Both of these have been approved to go into signature gathering to see if they can obtain the necessary citizen support (86,000 valid voter signatures) in order to qualify for the fall’s ballot. CBA’s strategy is to keep them off of the ballot. We have appealed the state’s decision to the Colorado Supreme Court and are hopeful of a good decision which would stop these issues. But a far more troublesome topic is initiative #84 that would upset the foreclosure process in Colorado. The most dramatic impact is that it would preclude the secondary market from buying loans secured by Colorado real estate, commercial or residential. This drastic drop in available mortgage loans (90% of CO mortgages are sold to the sec- ondary market) would create our own self-induced Colo- rado recession. Additionally it passes the extraordinary compliance costs onto the 98% of customers who pay their mortgages on time. We have no shortage of arguments against it, but have a big challenge since the media portrays lenders as being able to foreclose on property without proper documentation. This absolutely is not true. Proponents’ “It’s not fair” bumper sticker (incorrectly premised on no documentation required) are difficult to counter with ratio- nal explanations. But we’re organizing to do that. This also has been appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court. We do not dismiss at all the possibility that ad- equate signatures can be gathered to put it on November’s ballot. Then we would have a tough, expensive opposition campaign. Your career is also directly impacted by the laws adopted by our legislature. One of the reasons that the foreclosure initiative was started is that CBA killed all the bad foreclo- sure bills in this year’s legislature. A significant part of that was that control of the legislature to split between the two parties. With single party domination of the legislature we would not fare well. We fear that single party domination could happen this November for the next two years, and it very much is in our interests as an industry and in your in- terests as a banker to help avoid that, and the anti-business and anti-banking legislation that could result from it. The key way to deal with these election possibilities is to be engaged. We urge you to volunteer for your favorite candidate’s campaign, contribute money to that campaign, be involved with CBA, contribute to our PAC, and generally be very involved in helping the public determine who will make decisions in the legislature for the next two years, and what happens on the Constitutional amendments. We have a lot at stake. We’re in this together. Let’s engage in all these elections.  Don Childears CBA President/CEO