Bill Bynum says the Obama Administration's recent decision to use some funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program to help community development financial institutions was the result of long consultations with the CDFI industry.
Bynum, CEO of the $122 million Hope Community Credit Union and its sponsor, Enterprise Corporation of the Delta, chaired the U.S. Treasury Department's Community Development Advisory Board in early 2009. As part of his work with that committee, he also chaired a subcommittee that looked into how CDFIs could help bring economic recovery in early 2009. Allocating $1 billion in TARP funds in capital and liquidity to CDFIs to use in their economically troubled communities was one of the subcommittee's "main" recommendations that the overall committee accepted and presented to administration officials, Bynum recounted.
He said that staff from ECD and from other CDFIs and organizations like the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions and Self Help Credit had worked with Treasury Department Staff, representatives from regulators and CDFI experts to craft the program that the administration eventually announced.
This process included meetings with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and President Obama, Bynum said.
