| On Branch
Closures Federal Reserve Withholds Info
and Tells Inner City Press No Closure List
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Patreon Maxwell
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South Bronx /
SDNY, April 11 – Amid a
wave of bank branch closings
in the US, particularly in
lower income areas, during the
COVID-19 pandemic, Inner City
Press in October 2020 filed a
Freedom of Information Act
request with the main US
regulator, the Federal
Reserve, for information about
branch closing.
Tellingly,
despite talk about improved
community and consumer
protection regimes among the
bank regulators, the Federal
Reserve after 17 months on
this FOIA request has told
Inner City Press it has only
five pages that it will
release, about a single
Wisconsin branch closure (even
then, redacted).
Worse, the
Federal Reserve, charged with
reigning in swaps and even
crypto-currency fraud, says it
does not maintain a list of
branch closings, as even the
OCC does. This is shameful,
and must be addressed by the
two incoming Governors, and
who ever will replace Sarah
Bloom Raskin as a Fed nominee.
From the Fed's
April 2022 FOIA request to
Inner City Press / Fair
Finance Watch:
"This is in
response to your electronic
message dated and received by
the Board’s Information
Disclosure Section on October
20, 2020. Pursuant to the
Freedom of Information
Act (“FOIA”), 5 U.S.C. § 552,
you seek: electronic records
concerning requests to the
Federal Reserve System
about branch closings or
consolidations in low or
moderate income census
tracts including request for
public meetings, from
July 4, 2018 to the date of
your response. Your
request included an example of
a notice by the Federal
Reserve Bank of Chicago
(“Reserve Bank”) for a public
meeting concerning the notice
by Johnson Bank, Racine,
Wisconsin to close its branch
located at 2729 18th Street,
Kenosha, Wisconsin.
You further
noted that your request also
includes: all such meetings
held, as well as requests for
meetings, direct or
indirect, which were denied,
as well as all non-exempt
portion of FRS records
reflecting considering and
decision making on such
requests.1
1 In an
email correspondence with Ms.
Katrina Allen Austin of the
Board’s Legal Division
on March 23, 2021,
seeking clarification about
the nature of your request,
you noted that “[t]he
OCC, for example, publishes
each branch closing in its
Weekly Bulletins” and you
subsequently sought FRS
“records [of] when public
meetings have been requested
on branch closings, and
when they have been granted
…[separate] out those in LMI
communities and where
public meetings were
requested and / or granted.” 2
In light of your
March 23, 2021, email, staff
interpreted your request as
seeking records
concerning “branch closings by
FRS-supervised institutions
(state member banks) …
where public meetings were
requested and / or granted”
from 2020.2 You may wish to
know that the Board does not
publish a “list of branch
closings” as the OCC
does. Staff searched Board
records and located
information responsive
to your modified
request. This
information is subject
to withholding and will
be withheld from you pursuant
to exemptions 5 and 6 of the
FOIA, 5 U.S.C. §§
552(b)(5) and (b)(6),
respectively. I have also
determined that the
information should be withheld
because it is reasonably
foreseeable that disclosure
would harm an interest
protected by an exemption
described in subsection (b) of
the FOIA, 5 U.S.C. §
552(b). The responsive
documents have been reviewed
under the requirements
of subsection (b), and all
reasonably segregable
nonexempt information will be
provided to you.
Additionally, approximately 5
pages are being withheld in
full.
Inner City
Press will have more on this.
***
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