The bureaucratic fallout from the Minnesota government shutdown, now in its second week, continued to reverberate Wednesday with credit unions grappling with lien bottlenecks on recreational loans and businesses suffering revenue losses because of state agency closures.
For one, members of the $810 million US FCU of Burnsville are unable “to transfer titles on boats and in addition the Department of Motor Vehicles has stopped sending us our lien cards, which means we don’t have proof that our liens are being perfected on our loans,” said Rick Blood, vice president of mortgage and consumer lending.
The 68,000-member US FCU “can manage in the short term, but the longer this goes on the more issues that will cause,” said Blood.
“Anecdotally,” said Blood, “we have heard from some of our members, especially on the commercial side, that their businesses are being impacted by the loss of revenue that the state employees provided. The shutdown is impacting more than just those employed by the state. Many businesses are tied into the state or rely on the state workers as a portion of their revenue.”
The 12-day Minnesota shutdown, which began July 1, is now the longest state government shutdown in recent U.S. history with no end in sight as Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton continues locked in a bitter clash with a Republican majority in the legislature.
