Just a heads up in case anyone is trying to keep up with the various state predatory lending laws, here is a list of all the ones I've found that have been introduced this legislative session:

Arizona
South Carolina
New Jersey
Tennessee
Kentucky
Missouri
Utah
Minnesota
New Mexico
Indiana
Oklahoma
Hawaii

In addition, Massachusetts and Maryland have both proposed revisions to their existing laws.

And on the Federal level, there have been several bills introduced, but the Ney bill is the one that seems to be getting the most buzz and may make it further than the others. (At this point I sort of wish there WOULD be one Federal law so that all these states would quit getting creative with their own laws. Not to mention the city ordinances.)

I don't suppose you have bill numbers for them, do you? I'm concerned with Arizona and New Mexico.

What is your opinion regarding the recent preemptions by the OTS on some of the states' attempts at predatory lending regulations? Do you think that may have chilling effect on some of these efforts?

Arizona is SB 1353 (wrote that BS the first time....)
New Mexico is SB 449

Thanks! Now I guess I have some leisure reading!

Personally, I don't think the OTS argument holds water, and I think they are trying to cover up for the fact that they let WAMU boss them around (WAMU is their biggest client and WAMU has basically said that THEY are exempt from state laws and what's the OTS gonna do about it, huh?) So they are therefore trying to be consistent with that situation. Consistency is good. But I just really don't buy into their argument.

HOWEVER. Apparently the OCC is now considering coming out with a similar statement, that the OCC is the primary regulator of national banks, and the OCC is Federal, and therefore states don't have the right to regulate independently for national banks. This ought to be an interesting discussion if the OCC does issue that statement - state's rights and all that. I suspect if that statement gets issued a number of states will challenge it in court.

Well don't do it right before bed time, it will give you nightmares.

Thanks for the information. Do you have website source for this?

I do, in fact. It's the MBAA site, found here:

MBAA Predatory Lending

and I try to check it once a day or at least every other day, just to see what is going on. From that main page, you can link to the various state pages, and into the official state legislature sites to follow up as needed.

You know, at my prior employer (last fall) we kept running into an issue even when the state or city itself said banks were exempt. We had broker and correspondent channels. Brokers were not exempt so if one touched a deal, it was essentially tainted and we could not take advantage of our exemption. And it presented a similar situation with correspondents...if they were a bank and were exempt, was a broker involved, tainting the deal and triggering the law? The way some of the laws were written (Cleveland comes to mind as a major headache) liability could carry over to the lender/purchaser. I am glad I moved on!

Yeah, we run into the same thing. So for example in DC, we are exempt, but the broker/corresp. lenders we deal with are not, which drags us back into it, at least from the perspective of monitoring their loans. It's kind of a pain.

Bob Ney (R-Ohio) has introduced legislation at the national level that would preempt state laws.
NY Times

Add Vermont, Rhode Island, and Washington State to the list of those considering. And Connecticut is considering revising theirs.