Brittanie Bonanzino
AVP, Communications
Washington
Call to Action – tell Colorado’s Senators to support HB 1351
Posted by Katie March on April 25, 2024
The Colorado State Senate is considering House Bill 1351, a measure that is a top credit union priority, and the banks are fighting hard — sending legislators thousands of emails — to convince them to take an anti-credit union position. We need your help to fight back.
We need your help today, or at least before Friday, April 26, to email the entire State Senate.
You may have seen a few recent calls to action asking you to submit a form or make some calls, but this new request is important to send emails to the entire State Senate to show our legislators how many credit union supporters are in the state.
Here’s how you do it.
Step 1: Copy and paste the email subject line and email template language below into a new email and include your email signature.
Step 2: Copy and paste the list of emails below into the BCC field and hit send! This action should take 90 seconds or less and is incredibly important.
Step 3: Share this email with your staff, board, co-workers, and any other credit union supporters you can think of and ask them to send emails to their elected officials. The goal of this action is to show legislators that there are a lot of people in Colorado who support credit unions and this legislation.
Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions about this legislation or how to participate in this Call to Action.
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Email Subject Line (copy/paste) – Please Support HB 1351 to keep our local financial services local
Email Template (copy/paste)
Dear Senator,
I am reaching out asking you with great urgency to support HB 1351 with no amendments, which would enact all of the Department of Regulatory Agencies recommendations from the Banking Sunset review.
One of the provisions in this legislation would allow Colorado’s banks the choice to sell some or all of their assets to a credit union and provide more options for Coloradans’ money to stay local. There has been some misinformation shared about how this would impact financial services throughout the state. It is important to know the following:
- 46 out of 50 states allow this type of transaction.
- Colorado’s credit unions work to serve the community and their member owners. Credit unions serve their community through small business lending, agricultural lending and the services their members need, like through home and auto loans. They also value the expertise that community banks have in agricultural and commercial lending and would not pursue a transaction if they did not have the capacity to continue offering these services in the communities they serve.
- Regrettably, some banks have few if any options in a sale scenario and when Wall Street and out-of-state banks pursue these purchases of banks and bank assets, the local financial branch networks and access points are in jeopardy. Banks have already closed 16% of their Colorado branches in the last decade and typically target 40 to 60% cost savings when purchasing another bank, most of those acquired through job cuts. Credit unions are committed to local financial access and employment and are structured uniquely to help the underserved.
If you have questions about this legislation, I encourage you to connect with Katie March, VP Colorado Legislative Affairs at [email protected]. Please support this bill to give banks a choice to keep our local financial institutions local.
Thank you,
(insert your email signature)
Emails to Send to (copy/paste into BCC field) Note: when you copy/paste these into the BCC field the “To” and “cc” field will be empty, but you can still send the email with all of these emails in BCC:
Posted in Advocacy on the Move, Colorado Advocacy.
