Brittanie Bonanzino
AVP, Communications
Washington
Alyse Knudsen
Manager, Communications
Oregon
Immediate Colorado Call to Action on HB 1351 – Your Help is Vital
Posted by Katie March on May 1, 2024
Late Tuesday night in the Senate Business, Labor & Technology Committee hearing, HB 1351, the Division of Banking & Board Sunset bill was heard and voted upon. Credit unions showed up in force to support this priority credit union legislation.
Unfortunately, by a one-vote-margin, committee members voted in favor of the pro-banks amendment to remove the section that would give banks the option to sell to credit unions, gutting the pro-credit union portion of the bill.
But, the battle isn’t over, and we still have the potential to add the provision back into the bill. And we need your help to do it.
Here’s the plan:
We need all Colorado credit union advocates to reach out to every State Senator urging them to support a bank being allowed the choice to sell their assets to a credit union.
Below is a draft message that you can copy and paste into an email. Please take this action immediately and let’s show the Senate the power of credit unions’ grassroots advocacy once again.
Here’s how you do it:
Step 1: Copy and paste the email subject line and email template language into a new email and include your email signature. If you’d like to personalize the message, feel free.
Step 2: Copy and paste the list of Senator 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 Call to Action with your staff, board, co-workers, and any other credit union supporters you can think of and ask them to send emails to their Senators. 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.
Email Subject Line (copy/paste)
Please support keeping financial services local
Email Template (copy/paste)
Dear Senator,
Please support a bank’s choice to sell their assets to a credit union.
There has been some severe 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.
- This provision only offers a bank the choice to consider a credit union within the option of potential buyers, it does not require it whatsoever, under any circumstances.
- Colorado’s credit unions work to serve the community and their member owners through small business lending, agricultural lending, and other services their members need, like home and auto loans. They also value the expertise that community banks have in agricultural and commercial lending and would simply not pursue a transaction if they did not have the capacity to continue offering these services.
- 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 bank assets, the local financial branches 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.
If you have any questions about this legislation, I encourage you to connect with Katie March, VP Colorado Legislative Affairs at [email protected].
Please support giving banks a choice to keep our local financial institutions local.
Thank you,
(insert your email signature)
Senator Emails (copy/paste all emails 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.
