In Other Media-eg New Statesman, AJE, FP, Georgia, NYT,  Azerbaijan, CSM Click here to contact us     .

By Matthew R. Lee, Video, FOIA fee denial

SOUTH BRONX, SDNY, Jan 29 – The US Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency under Joseph Otting and Brian Brooks rubber stamped bank charters and mergers for crypto-currency operators and redliners without regard to the Community Reinvestment Act, or FOIA.

  On January 25 Janet Yellen became the Secretary of the Treasury. And on January 27, a pause in one of Brian Brooks' proposals - but what of pending scam charters and mergers? OCC: "The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) today announced it has paused publication of its rule to ensure large banks provide all customers fair access to their services.  The agency proposed the rule in November 2020 to codify more than a decade of OCC guidance stating that banks should conduct risk assessments of individual customers, rather than make broad-based decisions affecting whole categories or classes of customers, when providing access to services, capital, and credit.  Pausing publication of the rule in the Federal Register will allow the next confirmed Comptroller of the Currency to review the final rule and the public comments the OCC received, as part of an orderly transition."  What else will Yellen and whoever do to turn her Department's policies around? Inner City Press and Fair Finance Watch will be watching, acting and reporting.

  The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under Kathy Kraninger issued Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data in a way that excluded more of the public and community groups more than in any recent year, undermining the entire purpose of the HMDA law. See this page.

 Now, what will Rohit Chopra do? The access to data for grassroots groups no using Excel should be restored - and FOIA requests, by Inner City Press and others, must now be answered, see below.

  Inner City Press on submitted this FOIA request: "Dear CFPB Chief FOIA Officer:  Pursuant to the federal Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552, I request from the CFPB any and all records as that term is defined in FOIA regarding the CFPB's decision / action to make the 2018 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data only available for download (the so-called data filter) rather then searchable and viewable in reports on the CFPB website as was the case for the 2017 data.

     To assist you in rapidly providing the requested information - this is a request for expedited treatment given that the withholding in accessible format of the 2018 data each day hinders low income community groups from commenting on bank mergers, the only enforcement mechanism of the Community Reinvestment Act to prevent bank redlining - be aware that the issue has been raised to CFPB staff in a number of conference calls including most recently to, inter alia  Brenda Muniz, Tim Lambert [some names redacted in this format.]

  These CFPB staffers were directly asked by the undersigned who at CFPB made the decision to curtail availability of HMDA data in simple format on the website. Knowing which government agency official made such a decision is a sine qua non of FOIA: the information should be provided an expedite basis, as well as all related documents." Watch this site.

On October 12 Inner City Press reported a flood of identical comments *supporting* Kraninger and the CFPB like this one on HMDA: "Comment Submitted by Anonymous Sonnenburg, I appreciate the CFPB's recent willingness to reconsider and revise its prior rulemakings." This while CFPB is still withhold the basis race and ethic information from display on its website, raw data download only unlike previous years. This is an outrage - and its having impacts. The Federal Reserve, citing the CFPB, rubber stamped Hancock Whitney - MidSouth Bank, and is prepared to close its comment periods on Simmons - Landrum and other proposed mergers while the CFPB on September 7 is still saying this: "We will retire HMDA Explorer and its API Our tool for exploring HMDA data—and the Public Data Platform API that powers it—will be shut down in the coming months. We will post additional details as they become available.  The 2018 HMDA data include a number of new data points and, as a result, are not compatible with the multi-year functionality provided by the Public Data Platform.    The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) will publish a query tool for the 2018 data in the coming months, which will be available at ffiec.cfpb.gov.  After the new query tool becomes available, the Bureau will retire the current HMDA Explorer tool and the Public Data Platform API  that powers it."  In the coming months? The CFPB has months to do this. They are intentionally making it more difficult for the public to access basic fair lending information.

 This is confirmed in a blithe "request for comments" that includes "the HMDA Platform allows users to produce and export custom data sets rather than relying on numerous static reports that few previously accessed. To enable external software developers to access some of the key services offered by the HMDA Platform, the Bureau publishes Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that can be integrated into external websites, analytical tools, and industry software. The Bureau has innovated in other areas as well."

 Inner City Press has commented:   Dear Director Kraninger and others at CFPB:     On behalf of Inner City Press / Fair Finance Watch, which has reviewed and publicized HMDA data for years, this is a comment both on Docket No. CFPB–2019– 0048 and specifically demanding that CFPB's troubling whitewash of the 2018 HMDA data, refusing to make it simply available with race and ethnicity information, be reversed and the data made available as below.    Your proposal (mis) states that "tthe HMDA Platform allows users to produce and export custom data sets rather than relying on numerous static reports that few previously accessed.      That is false, and is also an unacceptable pretext to make race and ethnicity HMDA data less available.  As Inner City Press has previously written to CFPB staff, so far without action: Go to  https://ffiec.cfpb.gov/data-publication/disclosure-reports   Compare disclosure for 2017 (with race and ethnicity)  https://ffiec.cfpb.gov/data-publication/disclosure-reports/2017      to 2018 - no race or ethnicity.     CFPB must make this basic information available, in simple format that can be used by grassroots groups. Already time is going by in which the 2018 data is ostensibly available but grassroots groups cannot access race and ethnicity information as they did before, which is among the goals of HMDA data.     Please explain when and where this information will be made available again.   Matthew Lee, Esq., Executive Director Inner City Press / Fair Finance Watch." Watch this site.

 Previously CFPB issued a rule relieving payday lenders of the duty to comply with the ability-to-repay standard for the CFPB’s short term lending rule of November 2017.

  Here's how the CFPB breezily put it: "The Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection is issuing this final rule to delay the August 19, 2019 compliance date for the mandatory underwriting provisions of the regulation promulgated by the Bureau in November 2017 governing Payday, Vehicle Title, and Certain High-Cost Installment Loans (2017 Final Rule or Rule). Compliance with these provisions of the Rule is delayed by 15 months, to November 19, 2020." Whats 15 months among friends?

The CFPB is also thumbing its nose at the US Administrative Procedures Act and proposing to undermine the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act.

CFPB is trying three separate but inter-related attacks. The first is to raise the threshold for reporting HMDA data, to exempt wither 36% or 53% of banks and credit unions, a proposal on which the comment period runs only to June 12, here. (Comments are going in from such banks as Village Bank and Hamilton Bank and even, incongruously, Brenda Muniz of the CFPB, see above.)

  Second is to weaken the "data points" which will be reported by those still required to under HMDA. The CFPB wants to drop such information as "reason for denial" and "debt to income ratio" - the very information that banks so often cite in response to CRA challenged by Fair Finance Watch and others, as justifying their disparities. Now the CFPB wants to not collect this supposed justification of disparities. Just trust us, is the message. Well, no. This comment period runs to July 8, here.

  Finally, without any comment period at all, the CFPB is eliminating the public's front door to the HMDA data, the HMDA Explorer web site that many community groups such as the hundreds that are members of NCRC use to assess banks in their communities. The CFPB wants to take even this away. They should be sued.  We'll have more on this. And see @SDNYLIVE.

   There will be fight-back, under NCRC's TreasureCRA campaign. Watch this site - including on actual enforcement of CRA.

***

Feedback: Editorial [at] innercitypress.com

UN Office: S-303, UN, NY 10017 USA

Reporter's mobile (and weekends): 718-716-3540

Search innercitypress.com  Search WWW (censored?)

Other, earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.

 Copyright 2006-2015 Inner City Press, Inc. To request reprint or other permission, e-contact Editorial [at] innercitypress.com for