WASHINGTON -- A Senate panel cleared one more hurdle between Michael E. Fryzel and the board of the National Credit Union Administration.
The Senate Banking Committee voted to send his nomination to the full Senate for a confirmation vote though the vote has not been scheduled.
Fryzel, a former director of the Illinois Department of Financial Institutions, would serve on the board through 2013 though each president gets to choose his or her own chairman. He would succeed Chairman JoAnn Johnson, whose term expired last August but has stayed on at the request of President Bush, pending the confirmation of a new board member.
The Bush administration has said it will designate Fryzel as the board's chairman, but his tenure in the top post could be short lived as presidents have the right to designate their own chairman, though he would remain on the board regardless.
He received little attention at his confirmation hearing earlier this month where he appeared with four other nominees to financial-related positions, though Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) expressed some concern about recent trends that have made credit unions more like banks.
The votes on Fryzel, and nine other nominees to financial-related positions took place during an executive session the committee held in a room just off the Senate floor.
Fryzel has had extensive experience dealing with credit unions both while in government and in private practice. Since leaving state government in 1989, he has represented numerous state and federally chartered credit unions and was the legal counsel for the Midwest Association of Credit Unions before it merged with the Illinois Credit Union League.
--cmarx@cutimes.com
