TOPEKA, Kan. — Kansas credit unions are girding for a new round of bank attacks on field of membership, branch expansion and charter conversions coming this summer as part of a legislative "study" initiative being pushed by an influential Kansas banker/lawmaker.
The CU assault is expected to come in the form of an Interim Credit Union Study panel set to be formed by the state legislature in a few weeks and to work over the summer prior to the start of the 2008 session during which anti-CU bills would likely be introduced.
"This study is not all bad since it gives us a great opportunity to once again tell our story to lawmakers," said Jerel Wright, assistant vice president and head of governmental and public affairs for the Kansas Credit Union Association.
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The attack on CU FOM and branch growth with a snipe at the conversion debate is being led by state Sen. Ruth Teichman, chair of the Senate Financial Institutions and Insurance Committee and director of a Stafford, Kan. bank.
Teichman, a Republican whose family owns five southwestern Kansas banks, has for several years played a key role in the legislature's so-called Post Audit Review of the Kansas Department of Credit Unions which criticized FOM policies as allowing CUs to expand "beyond their charter" and moving into bankers' turf in such areas as mortgages and commercial lending.
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