ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Having strenuously lobbied both NCUA Board members Yolanda Wheat and Dennis Dollar over his pending proposal (CU Times, July 19) to increase the number of economic development specialists (EDSs) in NCUA's small credit union program (SCUP) from 12 to 60-and then released his detailed position paper to the press-it came as a surprise when D'Amours registered only "deep regret" while voting for a mid-session budget readjustment July 13 that failed to add money for additional EDSs. "I asked the other board members for their support," D'Amours explained in a post-board meeting press conference. "I asked Cliff Rosenthal of the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions (NFCDCU) what he thought about it, and he didn't seem to have any problem with it. He thought it was a good idea. I talked to Rita Haynes, who is the chair of that organization. She thought it was a pretty good idea." "And last night," D'Amours continued, "after I had left...Mr. Rosenthal faxed a letter-not to me, whom he had been communicating with, but to Becky Baker, the secretary of the board, asking her to distribute it to the board-and he opposed the effort....He opposed it after having told me that the community action plan (CAP)...that we passed (as a proposal) recently was going to impact on his credit unions....But, in effect, he objected to it because...mostly what he wanted was for us to give him the money, so that he could contract it out. And, of course, he's always after us for as much of the credit union community's money as he can get...." "I know that they (NFCDCU) worked closely with Mrs. Wheat," D'Amours went on. "She came this morning and communicated to me that she wasn't going to support it. I had lost the one group in the credit union community that had expressed an interest in this. They weren't going to support it for reasons that I find absolutely outrageously unacceptable, and the one person whom I might have expected a vote for from the board notified me that she wasn't going to vote. I saw no purpose, frankly, for going through it." But despite the sudden defection of a perceived ally-and the opposition of a familiar board rival (whose SCUP version was the one adopted by the NCUA Board last year)-in a project that he believes is suffering from "enormous needs," D'Amours is reluctant to recognize his opponents' objections. And he has pledged to continue championing his well-known small and low-income CU cause. "We talk a good game when it comes to low-income credit unions," D'Amours charged, "but whenever it comes time to doing something about it, we get into a `paralysis by analysis'-that has been used frequently to refer to what people do when they don't want to do something....Am I going to give up? No. I'm going to raise this again when we consider the 2001 budget this fall, and hopefully, by then, credit unions that are affected by this-and are supposedly being represented by some people-are going to weigh in." But both Wheat and Rosenthal say they also favor small CU development, though they are not yet ready to back a $4.5 million, 400% increase in personnel-as D'Amours recommended-as the proper solution. Both agree that other, more process-oriented measures may be the right course for the moment. Leaving open the possibility of eventually supporting some increase in EDSs, Rosenthal, in his July 12 letter, pressed first for program evaluation measures, including EDS effectiveness assessments, job description and skill set reexaminations, agency review of policies deemed by NFCDCU as disruptive of small CU development (such as the PCA discretionary power to deny dividends on secondary capital), and even feasibility studies into contracting out the EDS work. Confirming that he had engaged in pre-board meeting discussions with both D'Amours and Wheat on the proposal, Rosenthal told Credit Union Times that "NCUA is a regulatory agency. They're not an economic development agency. If they're going to get deeper into this area, let's sit down and talk about it...." "We don't think that economic development specialists are the answer to all the issues around economic development...," Rosenthal added, explaining that D'Amours had indeed called for NFCDCU's support, but that it was denied after Rosenthal consulted with his board. "We'd like to be at the table. We don't want to be called a few days ahead of time and have our support demanded this way or that, quite frankly." Wheat harbors similar reservations as Rosenthal's and told Credit Union Times that she had only just received the agency's first quarter 2000 SCUP report and wanted to study it before voting on any EDS increase. Besides, Wheat said, the program already has 60 SCUP specialists assigned to it. "Yeah, there are 60 small credit union specialists in the system," D'Amours replied, "but the question is not how many there are. The question is what they're doing. They're not doing EDS work. Their whole purpose is to back up the EDSs....They are not a replacement for EDSs. They don't do what EDSs do. They can't do what EDSs do....These people are all examiners." D'Amours point was that the 60 specialists that NCUA had already assigned to SCUP had a client credibility problem when it came to EDS work. -
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