WILSONVILLE, Ore. — Buffeted by consolidation, the structure and management of state leagues seem to be undergoing a significant metamorphosis, and if you ask two recently retired veterans of the trade groups, there's no exact telling of the outcome but their fervent hope is it benefits the industry.

“Look, we're now a state that has strong credit unions, a handful of very large, healthy ones as well as small ones that do just fine but, of course, we've come from a high of 284 credit unions down to 80 and so that has brought about change,” explained Eugene Poitras, the retired president/CEO of the Credit Union Association of Oregon.

And in Peoria, Ariz. Gary L. Plank, the retired president/CEO of the Arizona Credit Union System, voices a similar refrain but notes also that the days of leagues “serving as the hands-on, back office managers balance the books, do the training and consult on loans is long since gone.”

Moreover, observes Plank, CUs “which used to be extremely reliant on their trade association” for those kinds of skills have recruited their own sophisticated and professional managers to do the job prompting leagues to chart out a new course in those traditional roles of lobbying and advocacy.

Still, whether mergers and the decline in CU numbers will force some form of regional structure or governance is very much an open question.

“I know Dan Egan has that kind of structure with those three states in New England but for those out here in the West, the distances are simply too great for that to work very well,” argues Plank commenting on the long-standing management agreement between Massachusetts, where Daniel Egan Jr. is president/CEO, and the New Hampshire and Rhode Island leagues.

While the existing California/Nevada and Colorado/Wyoming linkups of recent years were in large part anomalies, conditions today marked by tax and field of membership battles with the banking lobby likely dictate continual “autonomy” for individual leagues, maintained Plank, who officially retired last July.

Plank, 66, who was succeeded by Scott Earl, a CUNA vice president and former head of the Utah League of Credit Unions, argued that the future of leagues relies more heavily on preventing fractures between big and small CUs.

In essence, that means keeping them together to pursue common goals and in his 42 years of trade group management that can be a daunting task.

Without mentioning Navy Federal Credit Union by name and its CUNA resignation related to a dispute last fall in the Virginia league over a lobbyist's role on payday bills, Plank said such rifts must be avoided at all costs.

“That kind of thing is extremely distressing and tears at the very fabric of the movement,” said Plank arguing that the league management job can often be extremely difficult “since you have to get so many of your largest credit unions” to agree.

When that kind of issue arises, “people get excited and it is simply not easy to get them to work together,” Plank concluded adding that he has always stressed to Arizona CUs “that we have more to gain with a united voice.”

When large CUs attempt private lobbying efforts, “it simply screws up the works,” said Plank.

Meanwhile, the 65-year-old Poitras, who retired Nov. 30 as head of the Credit Union Association of Oregon, said the problems in his state have focused on the economic impact of losing so many small CUs over the years.

“Ever hear of the spotted owl?” asked Poitras. The Oregon outcry over saving the endangered bird figured indirectly in the merger of so many small CUs tied to long-since shuttered logging mills across the state.

“When the small wood product mills went out of business, so did their credit unions,” said Poitras.

And so now, the CUAO, which over the years has outsourced several services to outside vendors including education and convention management to the California Credit Union League has been looking once again at signing management pacts, perhaps with California or the Washington Credit Union League.

“That's an issue for the board to decide,” said Poitras who though officially retired and “planning to take up skiing again” spends time out of his Wilsonville home doing CU consulting on both local and state political issues.

Poitras, who had been CUAO president/CEO since 1993, is a former Alaska-based teacher for the Bureau of Indiana Affairs and previously served as a director of a Farmers Insurance Group unit.

As for Plank, the former chairman of the World Council of Credit Unions, he has spent the last six months of retirement on the golf course, on a Mexican Riviera cruise, and enjoying his grandchildren. And “when I need a break,” he said he runs up to his Pinetop, Ariz. cabin home.

Plank who said last year that after retirement he might take another CU job or do consulting has now dropped that idea entirely. “I find retirement stress-free,” quipped Plank.

–jrubenscut@aol.com

Instant Insights /

Two Retired League CEOs Express Concern Over Structure Change

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